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John Blanchette: After this hug, new embraces compulsory

John Blanchette  •  The Spokesman-Review
Published January 25, 2007

Spokane and skating continued to cuddle like a couple of Shmoos on Wednesday with the confirmation that ticket sales for these U.S. Figure Skating Championships had soared past the existing record.

The current count is 146,311 – more than 20,000 higher than what the organizers in Los Angeles were able to peddle in 2002. It could climb higher if a few more holdouts stagger downtown to see what all the fuss is about, though it might take a wildfire rumor that Johnny Weir is going to skate buck naked for attendance to top 150,000.

The skating brass' reaction to this phenomenon is marooned somewhere between gratitude and incredulity.

"When I went to the novice compulsory dance at the Convention Center," said U.S. Figure Skating president Ron Hershberger, "and saw more than 3,000 sitting there, I was flabbergasted. I've never seen that."

For those of you scoring at home, that was part "Attaway, Spokane" and part "Gad, you people will pay to watch anything."

More flattering with less between the lines was the description from America's ice dancing sweetheart, Tanith Belbin, who said Spokane "feels like a little Olympic Village.

"Skating is everywhere around you – even signs in bars. We work so hard and it's a big deal to us, so it's nice that it's a big deal to them, too."

Hey, that's us. We will sit through anything, if we think it's a big deal. This record business was, from the minute Spokane landed the event, something of an inevitability – whether you embraced it or had it shoved down your maw.

Now, what's next?

We bring it up because USFS executive director David Raith did, sort of, when he announced that the 2010 championships – the Olympic trials, if you will – "will soon be open for bid," and maybe it only seemed as if he did it with bedroom eyes, thrilled as the skaters are with their reception here.

And it was worth asking StarUSA's Toby Steward about it if only because the Spokane event promoter has been so adamant about the need for the city to latch onto the Olympic coattails of Vancouver in some fashion in 2009 or 2010.

"I don't know," Steward said without much enthusiasm when asked about the 2010 U.S. championships. "Our goal is the worlds."

Ah, yes, the worlds. Steward and his partner, Barb Beddor, put together a hasty pitch last year to be the U.S. bid city for the world championships in March 2009. Instead, USFS went with Los Angeles, and so did the International Skating Union.

We get the record, they get the worlds.

Spokane is the smallest city to host the U.S. championships since Tacoma 20 years ago, and Tacoma is hardly a stand-alone market. To think of the city hosting the worlds is a bit fantastic – to everyone but Steward and Beddor, anyway.

"I believe the worlds are a much more functional event for us," Steward insisted. "It's one category – senior athletes. You don't have the novices and juniors, so organization-wise it's an easier event to put on. We've hosted international events here and never had issues. Calgary hosted it in 2006 and we were there the full 11 days and I think we could do it better.

"People talk about the size of markets, but to some degree too much emphasis is put on that. Yes, you'd like to have more of a population base to draw from, but look at Goteborg, Sweden – they're hosting the worlds in 2008 and Spokane is just as large. It comes down to people and organization. You can host an event in Chicago or New York or a city the size of Spokane and it can still fall on its face if it's not organized and marketed right."

This is pretty much what the USFS has discovered in sending its championships here and there.

There have been successes – L.A. in 2002, Portland in 2005 (117,000) – and disasters in Atlanta and Dallas, which drew less than 90,000 for the week in 2003 and 2004. Last year's event at the Savvis Center in St. Louis was a testament to indifference in an Olympic year, and even last year USFS was looking to Spokane to save the day a bit.

"In a post-Olympic year, you never know what's going to happen," Hershberger said, "whether you're going to have some competitors return, or maybe some don't, or how you're going to sell the event. It seemed safer to come to a community of this size. We knew they had hosted Skate America and understood their organizational skills and backing."

Which is not to say any midsize city is an automatic fit.

"If they're not going to embrace us and support us," he said, "we're not going to go there."

Warm embrace or not, the world's skaters aren't coming to Spokane in 2009 – and the soonest that event is likely to be awarded again to a U.S. city is 2013.

So what about the Olympic year?

"We're going to have some discussions (with USFS) the end of this week," Steward said. "There are some international events, some things to be done out there."

Well, yes. There's Skate America about four months before the Games, which Spokane staged in 2002. There's the Grand Prix Final in December, which has been held in the U.S. exactly once in 12 years. There's the Four Continents event on the eve of the Games – although Raith and Hershberger said there have been recommendations internationally about not contesting that event in Olympic years anymore for logistical reasons.

In other words, there's no obvious way to satisfy Steward's Olympic Jones.

"We just feel strongly that Spokane needs to take advantage of the Vancouver Games," he said. "It's going to be a long time before we have the Olympics that close to our city geographically. And we fully intend to do whatever we can."

Hey, maybe we can cuddle up to curling. Call it compulsory and we'll be sitting in the aisles.