Sorry to complicate this issue even further, but there are issues of race as well as gender and class involved in figure skating coverage. Even before the attack, sports agents were saying a gold medal would be worth upwards of $25 million to Kerrigan. Some of you may remember that Kristi Yamaguchi won a gold for the U.S. in 1992 and while she has done very well for herself financially she has received very few big-money, high profile endorsements. She did appear on a Special-K box (a diet cereal happy to associate with Yamaguchi's slender figure). And she does an ad for Dura-Soft Color Contact lenses that goes something like this: "After I one the gold, people kept trying to get me to change" followed by a montage of Kristi trying everything from swimsuit modeling to talk-show hosting. "When I want to change, I go blue or green" - i.e. changing her eye color with DuraSoft contacts, to colors that might make her look Caucasian. Also, during promos for the Ladies' event, CBS featured images of Kerrigan, Harding, Baiul and Katarina Witt, ignoring two nonwhite competitors with outstanding chances to medal, Chen Lu of china who did win the bronze and Surya Bonaly of France who beat Baiul in the European champions. I felt all during the '92 games that Kerrigan was the "Great White Hope" despite the fact that Yamaguchi clearly had a better chance of winning. For more information, Jeff Klein is publishing an article on class issues in figure skating in tomorrow's Village Voice (included also is a sidebar on the narrative of family in figure skating from my March TDR article). -- Abigail Feder