I have watched one of the most remarkable figure skating performances I've ever seen.
The men's finals this afternoon were wonderful. And even the ladies' skating tonight was pretty good, if a tad shaky. Sasha Cohen, heavily favored -- heck, even Dick Button and Peggy Fleming predicted she'd win the competition -- fell on one jump and stumbled on another move and still got extremely high scores...5.7s to 5.9s on technicals and one perfect 6.0 and a bunch of 5.8s and 5.9s on presentation. But she skated first, and there was the ever-ubiquitous "room" for anyone who could best her. Only Michelle Kwan was in a postion to better those marks and pass her.
When Michelle Kwan took the ice, she had the audacity to be skating a relatively new program and to the music used by Russian rival Irina Slutskaya at the 2002 Olympics -- "Tosca" by Puccini. It's my feeling that she would have gotten around to "Tosca" at some point in her career, but it seems like she's skating to it now to show the world how it "should" be skated to...with artistry and technique and without the melodramatic hand-flailing and hair-pulling that marks Russian "artistry" in female figure skating these days.
I've seen this program twice already this year. She finished second the first time she used it, and she won with it the second time although she fell on a jump.
Not so tonight. No.
Tonight was magic time.
Tonight was one of those extraordinary moments in time when an artist takes the stage with an audience hungry for brilliance and the artist hands it to them with style, grace, power and tons of heart!
It was, for me, as perfect a moment as a moment can be.
Of course, it helps if you love figure skating. It also helps if you believe Michelle Kwan embodies everything ladies figure skating should be.
I love opera, too.
Both -- opera and Michelle Kwan -- move me to tears.
Oh, yeah....she won, too! Left everyone else in her dust! I daresay Sasha Cohen wouldn't have won if she hadn't fallen.
Her reward: Five 5.9s and four 5.8s on technical merit; and seven perfect 6.0s and two 5.9s on presentation.