I am late on this one but Kelli Lawrence of State of the Skate was recently featured on Universal Sports discussing her recent book Skating on Air, which takes a look at the history of skating on broadcast television.
Here is an interesting excerpt from the interview:
I had a hard time connecting with Kurt [Browning]. We ended up doing our questions via email. We were talking about his Olympic performance in '94 when he blew his short program and he knew it was over - he wasn't going to get a medal.
In his answer he talked about how he had never seen the clip, but somewhere out there was the Canadian press asking him over and over, ‘What happened?' and he eventually said, ‘I blew it. I just blew it.' He was clearly just devastated. He was recalling a little bit of that, but he had never seen the clip. He said send it to me if you find it.
I found it and I sent it to him and then I'm sitting there working and the phone rings, ‘Hi it's Kurt Browning. I'm in the grocery store right now,' but he was looking at the clip and he starts talking about seeing it for the first time. I felt kind of guilty that I brought this back to him in some ways, but he was talking about it diplomatically. About what is so life and death in those moments at that time and then here you are watching it in a grocery store 14 years later, you've got kids, you've got a wife and the perspective of looking at things back. I was so honored to be in that moment.
Kelli's a great, engaging blogger so be sure to check her out if you haven't already.