The Voice of Figure Skating

Skate Talk - Figure Skating in the Words of the Stars
By Steve Milton
Key Porter Books, � 1997
                                220 pages

Behind every great performance on ice, there is a skater. Behind every skater, there is a story. For every story, there is a voice ...

Call it Skate Talk. Steve Milton did. Milton, a renowned Canadian skating journalist who has written several books on this fascinating sport, has outdone himself with his latest release, a collection of interviews with almost every big-name skater, past, present, and future, plus judges, coaches, choreographers, broadcasters ... anyone with any influence in the figure skating world. From Audrey Thibault to Ottavio Cinquanta, the personalities of the sport are captured in a way they never have been before - told in a series of candid, unedited interviews in the skaters' own voices.

No aspect of the magical world of figure skating is left uncovered between the pages of Skate Talk - Milton gives us the skaters' (and the judges, etc., etc.) views on success and failure, relationships, the future of the sport, and more. Any fan will be drawn in by the honest insights and refreshing confessions Milton has unearthed, shedding tears over Tracy Wilson's recollections of her late partner, Rob McCall, or Marina Zueva's broken memories of Sergei Grinkov's last day, and laughing over Lynn Nightingale's tale of putting "hexes" on competitiors, or writer Beverly Smith's story of having her head stuck in a basket during a phone interview (it's a long story - read it).

The current members of the skating elite are out in full force - Elvis Stojko, Shae-Lynn Bourne and Victor Kraatz, Tara Lipinski, Michelle Kwan, and other current favourites shed light on the growing pressures and lifestyle of today's skaters in candid, and often humourous, vignettes. Lesser-known show skaters from the heyday of the Ice Capades and other such shows are also given the chance to tell their stories, stories which may not be as widely known, but are equally compelling nonetheless.

Figure skating is a sport which reflects life in so many ways - it is all about emotion, about soaring highs and crashing lows, about friendship and love, about passion, fire, and heart. It is a fairy-tale world full of stories; and with Skate Talk, Steve Milton has given these stories a home - a place to be heard.


Review Copyright � 1997 Y.T.S..