Dark Night

Four Continents

I was working in the library Friday evening, covering a shift, when Paul tugged at my sleeve. "John's skating his long program. Come watch." So I walked to the big meeting room, where a TV was set up. The community was invested in the ice center and support for the skaters that trained there, even if they weren't American, was high. Most of the audience were teenagers, who liked the idea that their classmates were famous. Paul and I leaned against the back wall as serene music started and John pushed off. His skating was so elegant, it was a pleasure to watch him. It connected the jumps to the spins and footwork beautifully to form a real narrative. As the music built, he jumped more and more, landing a quad, a quad/triple combination, a quad.... and then, a quad axel. The spectators went nuts, just like the commentators. A quad axel had never been landed in competition, and John had done it cleanly and beautifully. The technical committee didn't even have to review it.

"Did you know he was going to do that?" I asked Paul a little breathlessly. He shook his head, clapping and hollering with the rest of the people in the room. At the end of the program, John bowed to the crowd and went to the kiss and cry area, looking exhausted but elated. And with good reason; the axel jump puts in an extra half revolution, which is why is was so difficult. He bowed to the spectators above the kiss and cry, and settled in for his score. It took awhile. "Hi, Mom, Dad, hi Paul," he said, waving to the camera as he waited.

"Our other grandparents got seats right above the kiss and cry," Paul said, explaining who John had been talking to. When his score came in, he was comfortably in the lead, having gotten the highest grade of execution for that stunning quad axel. He had a little over twenty points on his nearest competitor, a bit under thirteen after the scores from the short program had been added.

"And one skater left to skate, Constantine Knight of the US," the commentators cooed as the thunderous applause for John's triumph started to fade. I turned away, but Paul tugged my sleeve again and I couldn't think of a way to get out of watching. So I was stuck listening to the opening bars of the "Scarlet Pimpernel" music from the Broadway musical strike up and Starry was off. He hit his quads and his triple axel, and then, just after the halfway point, landed a quad Salchow in combination with... another quad, this one a toe loop. The place erupted again, and the commentators fell all over themselves explaining that a quad-quad combination had never been landed in competition. I felt a headache forming at my temple as the commentators speculated that Starry might have the staying power not just for the Olympics this year but also the next one. "He and John Tang haven't just raised the bar tonight, they've blown it out of the arena. There's nobody in the world close to them." Starry bowed to what seemed like each individual spectator in the place repeatedly before going over to the kiss and cry. The only question now would be who would win, him or John.

And after another long wait, Starry edged out John by less than a point, and that was because he got extra points for the quad-quad, done after the halfway mark in the program for bonus points, and had squeezed in an extra triple, but John's artistry far eclipsed his. They'd both done the same number of quads.

"Dang," Paul said.

"No kidding," I said, then went back to work.

My fear was correct, Starry was almost unendurably smug when he got home with his gold. And sure enough, he started talking about his skating career past the Olympics. His hamstring was acting up again, so there was more therapy with the special platelets and more work with the physios, ect, ad nauseam. John was thrilled at his stunning quad axel, of course, but he talked more about getting to see his grandparents and how much he'd appreciated the extra effort the coaches were putting into his training. I told him with perfect sincerity how much I'd enjoyed the entire program, and he winked. "Wait til you see next year's programs," he said with relish. "I'm going out big. I'm working with the choreographers to make them as lyrical as possible while keeping up the difficulty."

"So you're done after the Olympics?"

"Well, hopefully after the World Championships after, but yeah.  I want to go to college in a timely manner, and truthfully, I'm getting tired of the physical toll. Sometimes everything hurts;  my feet hurt, my ankles hurt, my knees hurt. The laces can irritate my ankles, and the way the boots are constructed these days means excellent support for the jumps but the outer muscles are weak. Last summer I rolled my ankle while jogging on a flat, level track here at the school, no bumps or divots or anything. I've had stress fractures in my feet, shin splints, tendinitis in my landing knee, irritation of the quads and hamstrings, muscle and tendon tears and strains, pain in the hips and pelvis, which, they tell me, is due to differences in strength and flexibility, inflammation of the abs where they attach to the pelvis because the bone plates in the hips aren't quite fused yet and the forces on the obliques to get more torsion are too much. Muscled strains and sprains in my back, and I've injured the facet joints between the vertebrae. I've dislocated my shoulder and gotten concussions when I fell, and I've broken my wrists--at different times-- and had more sprains and strains from hitting the ice than I can count. I love skating, but the toll is getting too high. I'm not sure I remember a time when I wasn't always doing physical therapy and falling asleep with ice packs and/or heating pads. I've had that platelet treatment, stem cell treatments, prolotherapy, tenex treatment for jumpers knee and Achilles tendonitis. There's more to life than skating, and I'm ready to get into it."  

"Starry is talking about continuing past this next Olympics," I said glumly.

"But at least you'll be in college and won't have to listen to him with the aches and pains," John said encouragingly, and I smiled.

"There is that," I said.

"You still thinking about UC-SD?"

I smiled at Mr Tiller as he passed back our homework, then turned back to John. "Yeah, the more I research, the more excited I get about it." Then we had to turn our attention back to class as the presentations began. I listened as one pair of kids started talking about the Amazon.

"We're going to blow them away," John muttered to me as we clapped at the end of it. "The way you put things together is so much more detailed than that." I smiled.

And we did. Nobody's presentation was as complete and detailed as ours.

Victory.