Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 24, 1994 TAG: 9402240260
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KATHLEEN WILSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
At the Second Alarm on Williamson Road, Olympic ladies' figure skating has its Bob and Scottie.
"Lookie yonder," said Scottie Swisher of skater Nathalie Krieg, spinning while holding her skate blade over her head.
"Now that's graceful as ..."
"They'd have to put a skate on my butt if I had to do that," marveled Bob Butler.
Butler and Swisher - a couple of men who wear tattered caps and flannel shirts while drinking Old Milwaukee and dragging on Marlboros - were rooting for the pickup driving, trash talking, pool playing underdog from Portland, Ore.
It didn't matter to these two that Tonya Harding had stirred up the ugliest battle since Mia vs. Woody.
"There's just a little redneck in her," admired Butler.
Jim Wolford didn't find that, or anything else about Harding, worth admiring.
"I think she's wrong," he said. "She shouldn't be there. She's just plain guilty."
Wolford is a man who wears a cream-colored sweater and insists the tabs be removed from his can of beer by the bartenders before he'll drink it.
"They tickle my nose."
Butler argued that the red-sequined Harding hadn't done anything to her elegant Vera-Wang-costumed rival Nancy Kerrigan.
"It was that big guy who hit her," insisted Butler. "It's him that shouldn't be allowed to skate in the Olympics."
The guys' hearts went out to Harding.
"Her old man sure put his finger on her," sympathized Butler. "That's why I love `All My Ex's Live in Texas and That's Why I Hang My Hat in Tennessee,"' he said of George Strait's heartbreak ballad.
Although Harding's performance may have been judged as mediocre by Olympic judges, Butler and Swisher weren't harsh at all.
"The way they talked it sounded like she'd have to pull some sort of miracle out of her butt and she still wouldn't get a medal," mourned Swisher.
"And I don't think she's going to beat that girl from Russia who wore the leather outfit," decided Butler.
Who?
"You know, the girl dressed like Daniel Boone," hollered Jerry Steele from across the room.
"No, it was Robin Hood," corrected Theresa Bowman.
We're talking about two-time gold medalist Katarina Witt.
"I don't care about her," said Butler. "I love Tonya."
"How many of those Old Milwaukees have you had to drink, Bob?" asked Carolyn Thackston shaking her head from behind the bar.
When Nancy Kerrigan took to the ice, those around the bar fell silent.
"When all else fails, black-and-white prevails," said the Second Alarm's owner, Laura Ann Harris, softly of Kerrigan's elegant outfit.
When Kerrigan completed her nearly flawless short program, Michael Thackston said, "I think she could outskate the rest of them even with a broken leg."
He followed that with a loud "cha-CHING!"
"I'm no judge of skating but I thought that was beautiful," whispered Harris. "I'm someone who could just wash their feet and not do a thing with them."
Even Butler and Swisher had to admire Kerrigan's grace.
But the other skater who caught their eye was the 16-year-old Ukranian Oksana Baiul, the orphan who won the world championships on borrowed skates with crooked blades.
"I just love those underdogs," said Swisher, turning to Butler.
"Doesn't it remind you of the time we watched Miss Teen USA?"
by CNB