THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, January 17, 1996 TAG: 9601160036
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E6 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY ANN G. SJOERDSMA
LENGTH: Medium: 78 lines
IT IS DOUBTFUL that Washington Post reporter Christine Brennan, a lifetime ice skater, would have written ``Inside Edge: A Revealing Journey into the Secret World of Figure Skating'' (Scribner/Lisa Drew, 319 pp., $23), had the Tonya Harding-Nancy Kerrigan knee-bashing incident of Jan. 6, 1994, not occurred. The whack heard 'round the world brought a mass audience to the sport and exposed some of its intriguing contradictions.
As Brennan writes in her well-researched, but not especially engaging book, figure skating, that rare female-dominated sport, combines art and athleticism, grace and power. It fascinates with a mixture of ``tantalizing'' qualities: ``impending doom, living on the edge, and the chance to witness a career made or destroyed in a split second. Its enticement is the lure of imminent disaster, the subject of every skater's nightmare - falling. It's lovely and horrifying at the same time. . . . ''
Had Brennan (``The Miracle of Miami,'' ``Beyond Center Court (With Tracy Austin)'') better conveyed this conflicting sense of beauty and horror in her chronicle of the 1994-95 (October to February) skating season, or delved deeper into the personalities that thrive on it, ``Inside Edge'' might have sparkled.
Instead, it is proficient, thorough, informative - Brennan knows whereof she speaks - but often listless. Better as an insider's primer on the figure skating world than as an account of human struggle, it deserves a 5.8 for technical merit, a 4.8 for artistry.
Competition and the singlemindedness that figure skating requires for greatness are Brennan's main driving points, but neither is individualized enough. Instead Brennan drops many names, of both champions - the most thoughtful and interesting being Olympic gold medalists Scott Hamilton (1984), Brian Boitano ('88) and Katarina Witt ('84, '88) - and upcoming teen-age stars such as Americans Michelle Kwan, Tara Lipinski, Nicole Bobek and Sydne Vogel and rebel Michael Weiss. Only retired skaters, such as Peggy Fleming and Janet Lynn, receive fleshed-out profiles.
The active skaters, concerned about their careers and marketability, may be too tight-lipped, and Brennan, concerned about her own access, may be too close to them. In any case, most are disappointingly reduced to sound-bites and four-minute performances on the ice.
Brennan also tends to accept without challenge the ``skating community's'' party line. In a chapter critical of Olympic gold-medal hopeful - and the sport's favorite whipping boy - Chris Bowman, titled ``The Great Wasted Talent,'' she has little sympathy for or insight into Bowman's self-conscious clowning and his drug-induced self-destruction.
And yet she recognizes that a skater's schedule, which often requires tutoring and separation from family, ``condemns most to a life of anonymous, unceasing practice.'' They ``gear up in the summer, compete once or twice in the fall, and focus completely on the national and world championships in the winter.'' Despite knowing this, she fails to examine adequately the isolation that debilitates so many skaters, even the successful ones.
The book's most important chapter, titled ``Skating's Tragic Secret,'' addresses male homosexuality within the sport and the loss of many coaches, choreographers and skaters to AIDS. But here again Brennan adopts the party line, implicitly accepting the skating community's decision to protect the sport's image by refusing to address sexual orientation, but also lampooning the costumes and makeup of overly effeminate skaters. The subject deserves a more thoughtful treatment.
Brennan is at her best when explaining the sport's peculiar scoring system and the judges' biases, particularly the East-West schism that, respectively, pits artistry against athletics. She discloses that judges do indeed factor into their scores the skater's reputation, past performances, practice rounds, lifestyle, age (holding back immature skaters), attitude and appearance.
``Inside Edge'' captures the cutthroat nature of competition within figure skating and its tremendous expense of time and money. But it would have been enhanced greatly with more detail about, and empathy for, the individuals in this highly individualistic sport. MEMO: Ann G. Sjoerdsma is book editor for The Virginian-Pilot.
by CNB