Rochette and Kim Create Tears, Magic, History
2/26/2010 3:00 AM ET By Jay Mariotti
VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- The wait was longer than usual, almost suspiciously so, as the judges took their time deciding if the American teenager had skated well enough to thwart The Story The Whole World Wanted. When the scores finally were announced Thursday evening in a hushed arena, Mirai Nagasu had fallen just short of the bronze medal. A joyful gasp shot through the stands, and I'll admit this much: If ever there was a moment to ignore any hint of a controversy, that maybe she'd performed well enough to finish third and not fourth in Olympic figure skating, this was it, my friends.
For it meant that Joannie Rochette, the Canadian whose mother died of a massive heart attack only four days before, had won the bronze medal. And it meant she could skate into a spotlight on her homeland ice, to warm and thundering cheers in Pacific Coliseum and all over the planet, and lead the silhouette over to the medals podium, where she accepted her prize, looked down at it with tears in her eyes and shook her head in disbelief. Up in the stands, her father, Normand, was doing the same, smiling through his own tears and then shaking his head.
Too much of this Winter Olympiad has been about darkness and death, crashes and consternation, glitches and grief. What Rochette did was bring life and light to the stage and give Vancouver its most triumphant memory. To even lace up skates and compete, in the face of an intense tragedy, is courageous enough. To perform twice in three nights and do so with only a few mistakes -- well, be still my beating heart. With so much quarreling around here in recent days, whether it was Canadians booing Americans or Sven Kramer blaming his coach for an infamous speedskating gaffe or Julia Mancuso taking a jealous shot at U.S. ski teammate Lindsey Vonn, it was therapeutic to see Rochette melt the most hardened souls and remind one and all about the human spirit. Yes, cynics, it still can thrive at the Olympic Games amid 21st-century madness.
"I'm really glad I did this. I didn't really feel like skating; my mind was not really here," Rochette said in a riveting news conference after breaking down several times in the media mixed zone. "Ten years from now, when the pain has gone away a little bit, I would have wished I'd have skated here if I hadn't. And I know that's what my mom would have wanted me to do.
"Even though I was trying to be focused, the emotions got the better of me. I was proud that I could control them, because I didn't know how I could skate -- my legs were shaking. But I'm glad I did it."
In the kiss-and-cry area after her skate, she looked into a camera and prepared to say hi to family and friends as she usually does. Normally, she starts with her mother, Therese. On this night, for the first time, she left her out. Instead, she said hi to her dad and the people gathered back in her little hometown of Ile-Dupas, Quebec.
"And then I told my mom that I loved her," she said.
Never has more emotion oozed from a final night in what remains a powerful Olympic sport. Minutes before Rochette skated in honor of her mother, who collapsed after arriving in town to witness her daughter's dream, South Korea's Kim Yu-na delivered one of the magnificent performances in the sport's history and stamped herself as the queen of these Games. Her near-perfect skate left her with a stunning 228.56 points, blowing away her own world record by 18 points and making a strong case that, at 19, she's already the greatest women's figure skater ever. Kim was so flawless, so immaculate on almost every jump, that she exploded all expectations of a duel with her rival, Mao Asada of Japan. It didn't matter that Asada hit her two triple axels early in the long program. Kim was too far ahead to catch, and, inevitably, Asada made mistakes that left her with the silver medal.
And Rochette with what may have been the most heartfelt bronze ever in Winter Games competition. Last week, her mother told her, in one of her final conversations with Joannie, that she would win a medal. "She said, 'I'm sure, you're gonna get it, I know it,' " her daughter said. When her father came to practice Sunday and had to deliver the news that she had passed away suddenly, she never thought about not skating. It helped to receive overwhelming support from fans not just in Canada, but across the globe.
"I want to thank everyone who supported me. I want to thank everyone from around the world. It was a very tough couple of days," she said. "I've gotten so many messages, and I want everyone to know I'm reading them. I've gotten so much love, and all the comments and letters helped me so much to get on the ice and skate here for myself, my country and my mother."
When asked about her relationship with her mother, Rochette talked for several minutes, sometimes through a cracking voice. At one point, maybe in an attempt to break up the tension, she laughed and said her mother was such a hard-driving taskmaster at times that, well, let her explain: "Even though she's not here anymore, I'm not afraid to say it: Sometimes, she was a pain in the ass. She'd go, 'You went way too fast, or what's wrong,' anything, little details, " said Rochette, as a roomful of reporters laughed along and continued to listen to her narrative.
"It all started when I was young. I was an only child, and my mom wanted me to meet other kids so I could socialize a little," she said. "We started with swimming classes, but I would sink; I wasn't very good. Then we tried skating. In a small town, the only thing to do really is hockey and ice skating. She came to the rink with me. Then I watched the Olympics with my mother in 1994. We saw Oksana Baiul win, and her story inspired my whole family. That's when I understood what competition and achieving goals was all about."
And that's when she was taught tough love. "My mom has always been about that. In school, if I'd get a 98 (on a test), she'd say, 'Where did you lose those two points?' She was a strong lady," Rochette said. "She wanted the best for me. She would cheer me up when I was sad, and when I got a little too proud, she put me down a little so I'd work harder. She always kept me in that zone. I remember when other kids' mothers would leave for dinner. She would stay and keep watching me, and sometimes I wish she would go have dinner, too. I just wanted to make her proud.
"She would have wanted me to skate tonight. She was my biggest fan, my best friend. She'd say, 'Close your eyes, visualize.' She was there every step of the way. I'm sure tonight, if she had seen me, she would have been real proud."
On any other night, Kim would have stood alone as the buzz of the figure-skating world. You never would have known she was burdened by incredible pressure to win as the prohibitive favorite. She was that graceful and poised, that sophisticated and grown-up. The only time she showed her age was when the performance ended and she started to cry. Dressed in blue, skating to "Concerto in F," she was a work of art in winning her country's first-ever gold medal in a Winter Games sport not involving speedskating. Impressive as she was on the ice, Kim was as delightful afterward in the interview room, where she thanked every reporter who asked a question and gleamed in the global glare.
"I still can't believe that I did what I wanted to do at the Olympics," she said. "I've been dreaming and waiting for this moment, and I can't believe this is not a dream anymore. I have accomplished my biggest goal, the most important goal of my life."
Which explains why she cried. It was the first time she'd ever allowed an audience to see her tears. "In the past, I have seen many skaters cry after their performances. I always wondered why and what kind of emotions they were experiencing," she said. "I think I was very concerned about whether I'd be performing well. And when I did perform (well), that's why I cried."
The two-time Olympic champion, Katarina Witt, said after Kim's show that she rarely has seen a skater with her "charisma and style." That's some compliment from a skater who had plenty of both elements herself. "I'm very honored that a very famous and accomplished skater would say something like that about me," Kim said.
If they were startled by Kim, they were overtaken by Rochette this week. "My throat was thick and my eyes were full," said NBC analyst Scott Hamilton, the former Olympic champion. "It was something that touched you in a very deep place. When I lost my mother, I was a serial underachiever. And it awakened something in me that really without that, I don't think I would ever have been successful in skating."
Someone asked Joannie Rochette why she showed up at a news conference, with her heart broken and her father and family waiting, to bare her soul to strangers in the international media. "It's real important for me to do this," she said. "Even though I broke down in the mixed zone and they tried to take me away, I said, no, I want to do this. Because that's what I would normally do. It feels good for me to talk about it."
With that, she broke down again and spilled a few more tears. A lot of us were ready to do the same. |
