May Daze

What’s cool about starting a figure skating blog one month AFTER the season ends—or so I’m telling myself—is how it allows me to get really comfortable with this “new” medium before digging in, as necessary, when things get busy again in the fall.

If you happen to be a fan of the IRL, though (that’s Indy Racing League to the rest of us), things are “getting busy” right about now. For May 25th will bring the Indy 500, a race so momentous it apparently takes the entire month to honor it properly.

I know this not because I’m a born fan, but because I’m one by marriage.

And, perhaps because of my love of figure skating, I “get it” more than others do. Dancing With the Stars (which crowned IRL star Helio Castroneves as last season’s champ) isn’t the only thing these sports have in common.

The magazines, the webcasts, the eyes glued to the set as the drivers get the green flag—it all may happen in the complete opposite season, but the passion feels familiar just the same. Granted, I find 75% of most races to be dishwater-dull. There’s a reason I always bring a book along to The Greatest Spectacle in Racing, after all. But I suspect my husband would say the same for skating, no matter how dynamic the event.

It’s that other 25% that counts, that makes it all worth it, in either sport. We have a cabinet full of Indy 500 races dating all the way back to 1986; I suspect in each one of them my husband can pinpoint several highlights, particularly since he re-watches most of them every May in feverish anticipation of what’s to come later that month.

Does that make me crazy? Resentful? An Indy Widow? No… it only makes me envious. Why, oh why, didn’t I save all those Nationals on individual tapes too?

Thank goodness for You Tube. Speaking of 1986, our Clip of the Day goes back to that year as some 22-year old kid named Brian Boitano picks up his first World Championship (along with some vintage hollering by relatively new commentator Scott Hamilton).

http://youtube.com/watch?v=22uWBfJ0R-o