Is scott hamilton gay
And yet, of course, there are still boys — and by the looks of them, they’re good. It's day four of the eight-day championship, and the juvenile boys — the lowest competitive level, most of them between ages 10 and 13 — are training at the Skating Club of Boston's frigid and charmless rink. Even in their leggings and training jackets, the boys seem distinctly feminine, perhaps because they're younger and more flexible than the top male skaters. They're doing moves that are often reserved for women, layback spins and spirals, curving their arms and cocking their wrists. One boy spots his upright spin, whipping his head to confront the same wall with each rotation, a shift classic to ballet but atypical in skating. Another pulls his leg up behind his head while he's spinning, arching his back into a Biellmann position. They swing their arms and exaggerate their facial expressions, gaping at one another's double axels or pressing their lips flat in concentration. They're young enough that they still glance around when they fall, checking who saw.
Their mothers watch from the sides of the rink, clenching their mittens without looking at each other. There are very few fathers. They're
Michael Kirby on Ronnie Robertson
In his December 2000 book Figure Skating to Desire Skating: Memoirs of the Life of Sonja Henie, creator Michael Kirby mentions in passing the late Ronnie Robertson (September 5, 1937 - February 4, 2000), one of Kirby's former students.
Kirby is one of those skating folks who are concealed to the common, but universally famous behind the scenes for his life-giving contributions to the sport as it has developed. He has been a competitor, show skater, ISI president, coach, and large-scale owner of rinks and skating schools. There is no ask that he is a man of enormous talent and vision, whose impact has reached every corner of the North American skating world. While his claim to fame for this guide was partnering Sonja Henie, aficionados will also be impressed that he coached not only Robertson, but Richard "Mr. Debonair" Dwyer as well.
Unfortunately, Kirby doesn't do very adv by his delayed, great student in this book. He mentions Robertson only very briefly, in what is mostly a personal memoir (which reads as though someone had mistakenly taken the first draft to the printer, dropping commas along the way). But those passages tell vo
Ilia Malinin stirs tensions over awareness of male figure skaters with his comment
When 18-year-old U.S. men’s figure skating champion Ilia Malinin was asked in an Instagram Live chat last month if he has to “prove” he is straight, his halting react led to three quick apologies on Twitter as well as a formal letter of apology to U.S. Figure Skating.
When then-22-year-old Nathan Chen, several months away from winning the 2022 Olympic gold medal, attempted to navigate his way through a 2021 podcast in which he was asked if he ever receives questions about why he isn’t in a “masculine” sport appreciate hockey rather than a “feminine” sport like figure skating, he ended up posting a 78-second video on Twitter apologizing for his answer.
The experiences of these two stars of a brand-new generation in male skating illustrate that a decades-long conversation concerning the sexuality and perceptions of men in one of the nation’s most popular Olympic sports is not likely to finish anytime soon.
Scott Hamilton, the 1984 Olympic gold medalist, said in an interview for my 1996 book Inside Edge that he wore one-piece, speed-skating-style suits at the Sarajevo Winter Olympics as a reaction to those
Scott Hamilton on gays in skating
In the U.S., 1984 Olympic gold medalist Scott Hamilton is probably the best-recognized and wealthiest male figure skater. A major element of his popularity is his lovable, good-guy persona. But one not-so-lovable Hamilton trait has been his lifelong homophobia, which he discusses with uneasy frankness in his 1999 autobiography Landing It.
Hamilton became known in the 1980s not only for his triple lutz and impeccable figures, but also because he rebelled against ornate or effeminate-looking figure skating costumes and favored the athletic look of a speed skater-like bodysuit.
"Frankly, I was sick of people constantly assuming I was gay because I was a figure skater," he wrote (p. 191). "This fear of being labeled definitely played a role in my conclusion to radically modify my costumes in my last year of amateur skating." It was not until 1997, in his "Figaro" program for the Stars on Ice tour, that he had the security to wear an ornate costume, and even then it was in the context of an ironic, comedic parody. Hamilton commented publicly that he was nervous about that costume, but audiences approved it readily.
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