Aha! Now *this* is Rodney skating.

[icarus]

Hoo-rah, someone posted the performance that, well, it is Rodney skating (in Out Of Bounds, in case that isn't clear):

This. This is Rodney McKay, skating champion, right down to the slight chunkiness.

wildernessguru and I went out to dinner tonight (oops, we overslept and missed bowling) and I talked out John's summer training with him. Illuminating.

Comments

[sgafan33.livejournal.com]

Aw, that's Frank Carroll sitting with Lysacek. Carroll was Bowman's first coach, having "discovered" him at an ice rink at the age of 5.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Frank Carroll discovered him? I didn't know that. He said that Chris was the most talented skated he'd ever worked with.

[sgafan33.livejournal.com]

Well, that's the impression I got from this story written after the memorial:
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/olympics/2008-01-17-bowman-funeral_N.htm

"Bowman was 5-years-old when Carroll first spotted him at a rink in nearby Van Nuys."


Here's the first story that the NY times ran.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/12/sports/othersports/12bowman.html


An article from Time.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1703048,00.html?imw=Y

I saw that improvised performance. There was so much determination. He knew he wasn't good, he wasn't prepared, but he wasn't going to let that defeat him.

Having a natural talent must be great, but for Bowman it worked against him.

Oh, that Nova Scotia performance was the most prepared he'd ever been.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Ah. I'll bet Carroll was one of the instructors for that skating club. It sounds like an accidental "star was born" discovery, but actually, that's just how it works. Skating is a very small world.

Bowman was diagnosed as bi-polar in 2000-something (2002?) and the drug use was most likely him self-medicating.

Those articles were very gentle about the tensions between Bowman and Carroll, since Carroll is so well respected.

In order to get Bowman under control, before that Worlds performance Carroll put Bowman in virtual sealed retreat. On national television after all this training, Bowman said, half joking, half serious, "Help! I'm a prisoner!"

A famous fight broke out between the two of them in a practice session before the free skate, where Carroll deliberately didn't show in order to give Bowman a taste of his own medicine.

Carroll did not maintain the politeness I would expect, publicly speaking at the competition about Bowman being "very difficult to work with" and talking about him as if he were a small child. Though back then people tended to be more candid. Still, he screwed Bowman over in order to make sure it was clear that "this isn't my fault. This isn't what I teach." Which I can kind of understand.

Anyone else would have been completely rattled and lost after the war.

Bowman instead threw away everything Carroll had tried to drill into him and won the bronze. It was a clear statement on all ends. Carroll's attempted tough love only rattled Bowman. After the most disciplined training he'd ever done, he was less focused.

He was likely udergoing withdrawal -- without the wish to give up the drugs -- on top of the pressure of competition. Bowman treated skating not like a job but like an escape, a release valve for his demons, and Carroll tried to turn him into a worker like Todd Eldredge. But Todd's mentally balanced.

Carroll's desperate attempts to control him did nothing to improve his skating. In the end it was Bowman's guts and talent that won the day.

Bowman put his demons on the ice. His out of control sexuality (he had prostitutes in out of his rooms) comes out in his "Woolly Bully" routine; his need for validation and attention caused him to play to the crowd always, feed off their energy and enjoyment no matter what the cost to his scores back when this was "not done"; his sense of rejection and pleading after the split with Carroll comes out in his "California Dreamin'"; his rebellious defensiveness and amused self-deprecation is portrayed in "Bad Boy."

I wouldn't say his talent worked against him. I'd say his talent is what he had going for him, and that his performances -- especially his best, his exhibitions, where he drove the sport forward and changed it -- were driven by his problems.

For his own welfare and building his competitive career, he needed treatment for psychological and drug problems far beyond Carroll's capacity. He was far beyond anyone's help. His next coach, Toller Cranston, not only couldn't do anything to help Bowman, he got dragged along behind him into a world of drugs and chaotic sexuality.