What a Day for Yuna and Michelle!

Straight off the bat, two of my favorite sporting figures won today. Yuna Kim, the figure skater, won Skate America with a world-record performance in the short program and then a disastrous (for her) skate in the long. But the combined score was still 13 points greater than the second place finisher. And Michelle Wie finally won her first title on the LPGA Tour through all the noise and criticism of her detractors. How do I tie these two together?

Yuna has been on top of the world for quite some time now, certainly since last March when she won the World Championships for the first time. Since then, the media and her fans have placed a 100,000-pound paperweight on her shoulders called "PRESSURE". Today she succumbed to it. But still she smiled for the cameras during the interview. Good for her. As I have learned all too well in the past six years, you learn so much more from your mistakes than you do from your triumphs. Victory is great but it doesn't force you to reflect. To look at yourself in the mirror and ask what it takes to make yourself stronger and happier.


Michelle, after having won a USGA title at the age of 13, would find herself winless for six years. Until today. What a monkey she gets to hurl off her shoulders. So many people derided her as a fluke, a fake and even a floozy. (People say the stupidest things on the message boards.) But still she trudged on, and now, at the ripe old age of 19, she has a win on the most competitive tour for women in the world. And she beat the top-30 players on the money list doing so. Tuning everyone else out. Ignoring the crap. About how you ruined your life and are not worthy of love. And that's what Yuna needs to do today--let this loss go and not let it block her energy. And just like Michelle, she'll find herself in a better place tomorrow.

Give Her the Gold Medal Already

The Olympic figure skating season started this weekend at the Grand Prix event in Paris. Yu-na skated two nearly flawless programs. The short program had her skating as a Bond girl; in the long program, courtesy of Gershwin, she was the young lady seducing and being seduced on a night out on the town. Yu-na won both the short and the long, setting a new world record for both long program and overall score. Just magnificent!

Just 13 More Days...

Little kids began the countdown to Christmas at least two weeks ago. I've been in a similar mode, waiting for the arrival of January. That's when my two favorite sports start up again--golf and tennis. The boys will tee it up in Hawaii a few days after New Year's and the Australian Open will see my man Roger Federer win yet another Grand Slam. I knew it was going to be a long, grueling fall the moment the Mets imploded back in September. And although it looks like the Giants will make it to the playoffs, in my heart I've always been a Buffalo Bills fan. I guess I become something of a figure skating aficionado this time of year, but that's only because there isn't much else on the telly. Congratulations do go out to my compatriot Yuna Kim for taking the gold medal in Torino, Italy at the season ending ISU Grand Prix Final. But it's another skater who's been on my mind lately--Tara Lipinski. While for many I'm sure she's already melted away into the icy landscape, I've never forgotten how she outperformed her chief rival Michelle Kwan at the 1998 Winter Games in Nagano, Japan to skate away with the gold medal. Kwan, of course, had been widely tipped to take the gold. When she didn't, she came back in 2002 to try again, only to secure bronze. Four years later in 2006 saw her sad withdrawal from the Olympics before the competition had even started. Why is this piece of skating history doing figure-eights in my mind as of late? Because it's echoing what Barack Obama is about to do to Hilary Clinton--snatch away the nomination that everyone just a few months ago had already hung around Hilary's neck. When two individuals both demonstrate technical brilliance, the judges always go with the one who shows more "heart." That's why Nancy Kerrigan (dressed in Vera Wang) lost out to Oksana Baiul in Norway in 1994. And that's why Hilary is doomed to take silver. And why Huckabee is following suit next November. God, there really must be nothing else on TV. Oh yes, did I mention that I finally learned the rules of snooker?