King Kaufman's Sports Daily

Michelle Kwan: Only the Olympics matter, and she never won. Plus: Skiing, luge, snowboarding, race cars.

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Feb. 13, 2006 | Michelle Kwan's withdrawal from the Olympics Sunday meant that Emily Hughes, who actually earned the spot on the U.S. team that Kwan had taken by petition, will actually get to skate. It was an ugly situation righting itself.

But if you forget about that, her announcement was a genuinely sad moment.

Michelle Kwan is everything you want in an Olympic athlete. She's great at what she does, a nine-time U.S. and five-time world champion. She's also gracious, classy and down-to-earth.

She respects her sport and the Olympic Games. She's attractive but not intimidatingly so. She gives thoughtful answers to interviewers' questions. You could hang with Michelle Kwan. She's the kind of person it's nice to root for.

And when things fell apart for her this weekend, she held her head high and said she was sad but she'd just have to deal with it. She's a champion, through and through, and that's why she's so well loved.

All I have to do is think something less than laudatory about her and I get a dozen angry e-mails. It's worse if I actually write it down.

Having petitioned her way onto the team despite missing most of the skating season with injuries, Kwan reinjured her groin in practice Saturday. Saying she'd promised to withdraw if she weren't 100 percent, she stepped aside for the 17-year-old sister of Sarah Hughes, who beat Kwan for the gold in 2002.

What's really sad is that for all the comforting talk that Kwan will be remembered as one of the greatest skaters of all time despite never having won Olympic gold, she won't be remembered as one of the greatest skaters of all time because she never won Olympic gold.

Favored twice, she took silver in Nagano, Japan, in 1998, losing to Tara Lipinski of the United States, before settling for bronze in Salt Lake. And that's just not good enough.

In a syrupy video tribute to Kwan late on NBC's prime-time broadcast Sunday, Jimmy Roberts, the Sultan of Syrup, intoned over images of Ted Williams and Dan Marino, "The history books are filled with Hall of Famers who never won their sport's biggest prize. Now Kwan sits shoulder to shoulder at their elite level."

But she doesn't.

The sad fact is that, except for insiders and hardcore fans, figure skating is a sport that really only matters at the Olympics. And in sports that really only matter at the Olympics, you're judged by how you do at the Olympics.

Kwan did well. There's nothing wrong with winning a silver and a bronze -- unless you were supposed to win two golds.

Next page: Imagine an all-time great boxer never winning a title