Dirty Dancing

Sorry, but it's crucial that we speak now of (throat-clearing noise) crotches.

Like it or not, the crotch is essential in sports. No football play begins without passing the ball through the crotch. No at bat begins without the pitcher staring intently at his catcher's crotch. Roseanne Barr couldn't have finished her sentimental rendition of the national anthem without the crotch.

Still, for some reason, the people who run figure skating have gotten all crabby about the crotch. In fact at the beginning of this season the International Skating Union (ISU) instructed its pairs skating and ice dancing judges to deduct points for "undignified" movements. Mostly they are worried about too many, well, crotch shots.

"It really was getting disgusting," says ISU championships dance judge Charlie Cyr. "Seems like every performance, the judges kept having all these crotches shoved in our faces. It was getting gross. Or a woman would jump up on a man's shoulders, wrap her legs around his neck, lie back with her crotch right in his face and then rise again, smiling. I mean, hello? We're supposed to think that's elegant?"

Apparently the crotch that broke figure skating's back happened last season in a Grand Prix Series event. One dance team executed a move in which he carried her upside down as she did splits, her crotch being the main focus for the assembled multitudes, while the music launched into (this is true) Nearer My God to Thee.

Boy, some people just don't appreciate art.

There was so much focus on the crotch at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Los Angeles last week, you'd have sworn you were watching MTV. Pairs and dance couples spoke of all the moves they'd scratched for fear of losing points. Is the Lido lift indecent now? The Russian splits? The Hydrant? What about the Helicopter, in which the support is hand-to-crotch, as they say in skating (and Michael Jackson videos)?

What about the spiral moves of U.S. Olympians Michelle Kwan and Sasha Cohen, in which each holds her left ankle nearly to the catwalk as she spins? It's beautiful, but some people see it as something you might do at an annual checkup.

"It's hard to know what's decent and what's not," says Kyoko Ina, who, with John Zimmerman, won the pairs title in L.A. "Don't men do spirals? Why is it somehow indecent for a woman but not for a man?"

Does the ISU think that all these women would be more comfortable with a stripper's pole in the middle of the ice? And since when did figure skating start worrying about undignified? This is the sport that gave us Katarina Witt's Playboy spread, Oksana Baiul's blood-alcohol count and Tonya Harding's crowbar.

Besides, skaters are already the most policed athletes this side of the Dallas Cowboys. "I can't lie on the ice, can't stay on both knees," groans Ina. "My costume can't be too revealing. I can't wear a unitard [Debi Thomas Rule]. I have to have my crotch covered and my rear end covered, but if I'm in the middle of a spin and my suit rides up into a wedgie, is it a deduction?"

That's a Zen koan for crotchety ISU officials to ponder.

Everything in skating now is so asexual. Men can't wear tights (Brian Boitano Rule) and can't show armpit or chest hair. "I've got rashes on my chest from trying to shave it," says Charles Sinek, who will dance at the Olympics with his wife, Beata Handra. (Shouldn't there be some kind of allowance for these two? After all, they're married. We know they don't have sex.)

If you start censoring figure skating, what about the rest of the Olympics? Have you taken a look at the two-man luge? It's two men in lycra suits tight enough to tell if they have innies or outies, with one lying directly on top of the other! Olympic male swimmers wear about 29 cents worth of material. Is that indecent? In tennis, when Serena Williams goes for a smash and her skirt flies up over her waist, should she be docked a point? And, my God, what about Jesper Parnevik's golf pants?

So now you can add sexless figure skating to the Salt Lake City Games, which will have the Mormon Tabernacle Choir but almost no caffeine, liquor, cigarettes, bars that stay open past -- what? -- 9 p.m., strip clubs and massage joints.

Not that anybody would actually, you know (throat-clearing noise), want to indulge in those things.

Issue date: January 21, 2002

Don't miss The Life of Reilly (Total/SPORTS ILLUSTRATED, $22.95) -- a best-of compilation of Rick Reilly's columns and features, with a foreword written by Charles Barkley, available now at bookstores everywhere.

 

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