Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, February 21, 1992 TAG: 9202210178
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TOM ARCHDEACON COX NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: ALBERTVILLE, FRANCE LENGTH: Long
YAMAGUCHI BELONGS TO ALL
As the storyline unraveled with spills, surprises and a night of triumph over a triple-Axel threat, the young Columbus, Ohio-born columnist tried to wade through his sudden figure skating confusion with a question."So would Kristi Yamaguchi mostly be considered one of ours? Or, one of theirs? Or what?"
His pigeon-holing wasn't proposed in a way that was racist or jingoistic, he was just trying to get a grip on a moment that mirrored nothing from the past.
With falls by Japanese favorite Midori Ito and boldly athletic American Tonya Harding - the only two women in figure skating who have landed the most difficult of triple jumps, the triple-Axel - Yamaguchi found herself with a commanding lead for the Olympic figure skating title after Wednesday night's short program.
Yamaguchi, the current world champion, is in the Olympic lead, followed by American Nancy Kerrigan and France's Surya Bonaly. The stage is set for the United States to have a storybook finish in the showpiece event of the Winter Games.
For Ito to take the gold, the fireplug skater from Japan would have to win tonight's long program and Yamaguchi would have to finish third.
As Yamaguchi said after the competition, "Anything can happen. You saw that tonight."
Although explosively powerful Ito leapfrogging Yamaguchi for a gold medal is unlikely, it still makes for an interesting matchup.
The two women are the sort of rare protagonists who are not bounded by the parameters of their sport. Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert had that sort of link. So, too, could Ito and Yamaguchi.
It has been noted that since figure skating first went from backyard entertainment on frozen ponds to recognized performances, only white women of Northern European birth or heritage have held the Olympic figure skating crown.
In these Games, the golden promise pointed to two women whose bloodlines filter back to the island of Honshu. Ito's family now lives in Nagoya, Japan, and Yamaguchi is a fourth-generation American from the San Francisco Bay area.
Should Yamaguchi win the gold tonight, she would become the first Japanese-American athlete to rise to such sporting status in the United States.
Already pictured on the front of a cereal box - a canvas usually reserved for the most red, white and blue of our athletes - Yamaguchi, 21, is on the verge of becoming a national name.
With figure skating gold - said Michael Rosenberg, Tonya Harding's agent - the winner could earn $10 million by the turn of the century.
Such recognition and reward come at a very interesting time in the social tableau of our country. Japan-bashing has become fashionable on certain American fronts.
And yet Kristi Yamaguchi could become the standard bearer of these Games for her nation.
Call it payback. Her family deserves a national embrace. After Pearl Harbor, Kristi's grandparents, like so many Japanese-Americans, were forced into interment camps. Her maternal grandparents lost a flower farm in Gardenia, Calif.; her paternal grandfolks lost a ranch in California.
If such a righted wrong isn't reason enough for gold, how about the idea of the underdog who finally succeeds?
Yamaguchi was born with club feet but after corrective surgeries, casts and special shoes, she overcame the handicap. Her mother vowed the girl wouldn't just walk, she would amaze.
With her mother providing the back bone, Yamaguchi rose to thepinnacle of the skating world. The showdown with Ito came after an unusual turn of events after the 1988 Olympics.
First, most of the stars of that competition left the amateurs for careers in ice shows. And then, in the most dramatic restructuring to hit the sport, the International Skating Union eliminated the tedious "school figures" that skaters had to perform in competition.
A move like that opened the door for an athletic skater like Ito. Growing up in the industrialized Nagoya, she had only one rink on which to train. It was old, undersized and crowded with recreational skaters. It would not have provided the setting for someone who would have needed years of concentrated practice to perfect school figures.
Ito, at 4 feet 7, soon capitalized on her explosive leg power. At last year's world championships, her powerful image was seared into everyone's brain when she whirled so forcibly into a spin, she flew straight off the rink and into the stands.
She hit her first triple-Axel at an unheralded competition in Japan in 1988, and in early '89 she did it again in Paris. From then on her image was set.
A year later Harding began to land the triple-Axel, too.
Suddenly, some people began to hint that an artistic skater like Yamaguchi - who couldn't hit the triple Axel - would be left behind.
And yet, early this year it was Evy Scotvold, Kerrigan's coach, who offered a prophecy to Wednesday night's performance:
"The ones who have the triple Axel can only beat themselves."
That's what happened.
Harding figured Ito was going to do the triple-Axel so she figured she had to land it, even though she missed it twice at the U.S. Nationals last month. This time she fell again.
Ito, though, had fallen with the Axel three times in practice early Wednesday, so she and her coach did some last-minute damage control and decided to substitute the easier triple Lutz.
The change caused extra concentration, a loss of focus and she fell.
Suddenly Yamaguchi, who skated nearly flawlessly to "Blue Danube," was in the lead.
As she left the rink late Wednesday night in her red-white-and-blue jacket, she was stopped by a group of young girls from Japan. They wanted her autograph.
And that's when the columnist got his answer.
Kristi Yamaguchi is ours, theirs, everybody's. She has the best of all worlds.