It is so very easy to goof on figure skating, and the athletes who compete in it. The sport virtually begs you to do it. When it’s not being utterly campy, it’s being utterly corrupt. It is equally easy to goof on American TV’s apparently inexhaustible ability every Olympiad to ladle on the pathos like syrup, as though real life was the 99-cent special at IHOP.
But I do not believe that there is a single athlete in these Olympics tougher than Canada’s Joannie Rochette. Her mother drops dead on Sunday. She skates through her practices. She goes out last night and skates well enough to place third in the women’s short program. I have no idea how she gets out of bed in the morning, let alone how she’s done all of this, but I know which way I’m rooting come Thursday night. Pixies be damned, this is as gutsy as it gets.