The Ambassador of Kwan
Disney signed Michelle Kwan to be a spokeswoman today, which is good for Kwan. Her final Olympics obviously didn't go as planned, and it's good see that she has landed on her feet (zing!) with her marketability intact. Happy endings are generally preferable to sad ones, after all.
There is a unique misery in watching the past-his-or-her prime athlete insist on trying to squeeze one more year out of his or her faltering skills. American sportswriters (including this one) were never completely comfortable with the decision to put her on the team at all. For better or for worse, injuries are part of sports and Kwan's petitioning her way onto the team struck many as unfair. Many writers also bemoaned the missing Olympic gold, a hole on Kwan's resume that was described with various synonyms of gaping.
On this point I refuse to join in. I refuse to fetishize the championship. Clearly the point of competition is to win, but steady excellence is worth something too. Kwan will instead join the company of great athletes like Dan Marino and Patrick Ewing, that never won their sport's biggest prize. It doesn't sound like all that bad a crowd to be in. And to say all those people failed throughout their careers is reductive commentary at its worst. Anyone who says that a single result is indicative of any larger truth is a braindead moron who deserves to be ignored.
There are lots of ways to ways to measure success in professional sports. If life were fair, steady brilliance would always be rewarded. But it isn't. Teams that are supposed to win lose. Players that are supposed to dominate get hurt. That Kwan failed to win at her two Olympics was more a matter of being beaten than of losing. Sometimes the best skater isn't the best on the day of that specific competition.
But you can't be intellectually honest and say with a straight face that Trent Dilfer is a better quarterback (although he maybe a better teammate) than Peyton Manning. Derek Jeter would be just as great a player if he were a (sigh) Detroit Tiger, but he wouldn't be a repeat champion. Moreover, the single-minded pursuit of titles is undignified. Karl Malone's final season in Los Angeles was a case in point. He was powerless to stop the Kobe-Shaq feud and wound up on the injured list for the only time in his career, as though his body rejected the Lakers jersey.
I'm fairly ambivalent about Kwan. I like jumping and she wasn't much of a jumper. Also, she was too wooden, which is what cost her in the Olympics. But she won nine U.S. titles and five world championships, which flashes-in-the-pan Tara Lipinski and Sarah Hughes (the previous two gold medalists) never approached. The value you place on it says more about your values than it does about Kwan's career.
There is a unique misery in watching the past-his-or-her prime athlete insist on trying to squeeze one more year out of his or her faltering skills. American sportswriters (including this one) were never completely comfortable with the decision to put her on the team at all. For better or for worse, injuries are part of sports and Kwan's petitioning her way onto the team struck many as unfair. Many writers also bemoaned the missing Olympic gold, a hole on Kwan's resume that was described with various synonyms of gaping.
On this point I refuse to join in. I refuse to fetishize the championship. Clearly the point of competition is to win, but steady excellence is worth something too. Kwan will instead join the company of great athletes like Dan Marino and Patrick Ewing, that never won their sport's biggest prize. It doesn't sound like all that bad a crowd to be in. And to say all those people failed throughout their careers is reductive commentary at its worst. Anyone who says that a single result is indicative of any larger truth is a braindead moron who deserves to be ignored.
There are lots of ways to ways to measure success in professional sports. If life were fair, steady brilliance would always be rewarded. But it isn't. Teams that are supposed to win lose. Players that are supposed to dominate get hurt. That Kwan failed to win at her two Olympics was more a matter of being beaten than of losing. Sometimes the best skater isn't the best on the day of that specific competition.
But you can't be intellectually honest and say with a straight face that Trent Dilfer is a better quarterback (although he maybe a better teammate) than Peyton Manning. Derek Jeter would be just as great a player if he were a (sigh) Detroit Tiger, but he wouldn't be a repeat champion. Moreover, the single-minded pursuit of titles is undignified. Karl Malone's final season in Los Angeles was a case in point. He was powerless to stop the Kobe-Shaq feud and wound up on the injured list for the only time in his career, as though his body rejected the Lakers jersey.
I'm fairly ambivalent about Kwan. I like jumping and she wasn't much of a jumper. Also, she was too wooden, which is what cost her in the Olympics. But she won nine U.S. titles and five world championships, which flashes-in-the-pan Tara Lipinski and Sarah Hughes (the previous two gold medalists) never approached. The value you place on it says more about your values than it does about Kwan's career.
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