Olympic medalist hopes to make Nashville ‘epicenter for figure skating’ in U.S.
GANGNEUNG, South Korea — If you’re of a certain age, Scott Hamilton is one of those transcendent sports heroes whose pinnacle performance is a moment in time. If you’re not, trust me: He was great.
The 1980 “Miracle on Ice” U.S. hockey shocker over the Soviet Union gets all the glory when it comes to Cold War-era athletics feats, but I submit Hamilton’s figure-skating gold in 1984 in Sarajevo as a highly satisfying American triumph. There’s something special about having the pressure on you and rising to the moment, and that’s what Hamilton did. The four-time world champ dominated, beating Canadian
“(Scott Hamilton is) just one of those people who’s better than you at everything. At life. At humanity. And then talent. I mean, as a hobby, he beats cancer.”
— SEAN HENRY, PREDATORS PRESIDENT AND CEO
Brian Orser and Jozef Sabovcik of Czechoslovakia, with the Soviets disappointing and finishing well out of contention — even those corrupt Soviet and East German judges couldn’t stop Hamilton!
And you know, if things were different back then and Olympians could profit financially as they can today, I’ll bet Hamilton would have
been back to beat Orser in 1988 in Calgary (American understudy Brian Boitano did it instead). They are two of the three American men who have won Olympic figure-skating gold in the past 58 years. These were the things I really wanted to discuss with Hamilton, who has lived in the Nashville area since 2006, when I sat down with him last week after a morning of Olympic figure skating, which he’s helping cover for NBC.
Boy, did he shoot that down. No thanks. Said he doesn’t even have any footage of his performance in 1984. Wanted to talk instead about his master plan of making Nashville the “epicenter for figure skating in the United States” and about his CARES Foundation and a very personal fight against cancer. Happy to talk about the current Olympians and his beloved Nashville Predators — season tickets were his second purchase here, after the house he and his wife, Tracie, bought — and his Skating Academy at Ford Ice Center and his plan for a “mega-center” with four or five ice surfaces in Franklin.
That’s the thing about Hamilton.
“He’s just one of those people who’s better than you at everything,” said Predators President and CEO Sean Henry, who helped broker a partnership with Hamilton on the popular Skating Academy. “At life. At humanity. And then talent. I mean, as a hobby, he beats cancer.”
He beat testicular cancer in 1997, 20 years after he lost his mother to breast cancer, and as he talked while munching on lunch in a packed NBC employee trailer, he did so with a pituitary tumor in his brain. It showed up in 2016, and previously in 2010 and 2004. Every six years. This one has shrunk to the point that Hamilton only has to get a scan every nine months, down from six, and to the point that doctors told him it was “miraculous.”
But that’s the thing. Outlook can’t be tangibly measured in these matters, but any doctor will tell you it matters.
“I’m not going to let anything tell me now I have to be this or now I have to be that,” Hamilton said.
“I’ve learned through all these things that, pretty much, how you feel on any given day is a choice. And I don’t mean to be insensitive to anyone out there, but I’ve seen people within hours of death, joyful. Because they just couldn’t wait to be in heaven. I try to remain optimistic and happy and enjoying every moment. I’ve given up thinking it’s always going to be on my terms. Because it’s not.”
HOW HAMILTON FITS IN ON NBC’S COVERAGE
This interview was supposed to last a few minutes, but it went an hour because Hamilton was cool with it and has a lot to say and because we kept getting interrupted. Because he’s a human magnet. Andrea Joyce sat down to eat. She and Hamilton have been together for five Olympics with NBC and often sightsee together. Producers and others in various roles kept popping by the table to gab with Hamilton and see what he thought of the German pair’s improbable rise to gold.
“It inspired me,” he told someone.
NBC has gone to Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir as its analysts for these Games, while Hamilton’s primary duty is as analyst on “Olympic Ice,” a daily one-hour show on NBC Sports Network. Lipinski and Weir are edgy and funny and flashy, and at commercial breaks during competition they are swarmed by assistants tending to their makeup and hair. Hamilton sits one row above them, quietly, wearing a gray suit. But every Olympics is like a reunion for him, and between old friends and fans he is never alone for long.
One night earlier, he had dinner with Orser, his old rival. Orser was a silver medalist as an Olympian, but he is now the top figure-skating coach in the world, with gold medalists Yuzuru Hanyu and Kim Yuna among his pupils.
HAMILTON’S DREAMS FOR NASHVILLE FIGURE SKATING
At dinner, Hamilton threw out his dream of creating an elite figure-skating program in Nashville. Of national and world championships taking place at Bridgestone Arena.
“He said, ‘We’ll come. We’ll bring skaters. We’ll hang out with you and check it out and help you learn how to build an elite program,’ ” Hamilton said of Orser. “And I was just like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ I’ve known Brian forever and he said, ‘Yeah, I’ll come.’ I mean, that’s like winning the lottery. When you have the winningest coach in the world right now offering just to come.”
Another old competitor, Sam Auxier, is the president of U.S. Figure Skating. He accepted an invitation to come judge a skating competition over the summer at Ford Ice Center — where Hamilton’s Skating Academy has more than 1,000 skaters a year — and told Hamilton he should host a Regional Championship Event, the first step on the way to Olympic qualification. So that happened in October.
Hamilton’s vision for a “mega-center” in Franklin, including a 5,000-seat auditorium, has been plotted out down to math on bond financing. He recently made a presentation to the Nashville Sports Commission on the need for more ice in Nashville, and he said Williamson County just needs to “pull the trigger.” The facilities — and an Olympic sponsor, Bridgestone — are already in place for his figure-skating vision.
“There’s no reason in the world that Nashville can’t be the epicenter for figure skating in the United States,” he said. “You just have to ask the right questions and populate it with the right people. And then get others to contribute. It’s bold, but somebody’s got to do it. And why not? I mean, everything else in my life is illogical. Go after stuff and set goals. Let’s beat cancer, too.”
HAMILTON’S REAL GIFT FROM 1984
Between the Skating Academy, TV duties, writing books, raising four children ages 10 to 16 and his involvement in several causes, Hamilton is swamped. But the CARES Foundation is obviously personal to him. It recently raised enough money to fund an immunotherapy research project aimed at medulloblastoma, brain cancer in children.
Chemotherapy helped save Hamilton more than 20 years ago, but he said treatment options for cancer today are “very archaic, and we’ve got to do something.”
“Immunotherapy, targeted therapies are really right there,” he said. “The money needs to catch up to the science because the science is a light year in front of us. Where the money used to drive the science, now the science is so far ahead of where we are in funding, we need to keep working hard on that.”
That’s the thing about Hamilton. There’s always something major to tackle. There’s always more that can be done and there’s no benefit to dwelling on past achievement. He still credits former Colorado Gov. Richard Lamm with a piece of advice that resonated. After a 1984 parade in Denver, then Hamilton’s home, to celebrate that gold medal, Lamm warned him of getting “hometown hero syndrome” and expecting the rest of his life to be like that.
Shortly after that, Hamilton attended a banquet for Paralympians.
“I walk in, in all my Olympic glory, right?” Hamilton recalled. “And I see athletes that do things that are inconceivable. And I felt like the biggest loser. I felt like, ‘What right do I have to feel like I did something special, when they’re doing things I can’t even imagine?’ What I did opened up opportunities for me, and my life will always be kind of grounded as an identifier in that moment. But I’m looking forward. I’m never looking back.”
Joe Rexrode is a columnist for The Tennessean in Nashville. Email him at jrexrode@tennessean.com.