The first thing Michelle Kwan noticed when she saw Irina Slutskaya for the first time was her skates.
They were black, and women figure skaters don’t wear black skates. They make a woman’s legs look clunky and are a definite fashion faux pas as an accessory to the costumes with which female skaters try to leave a dazzling impression.
Kwan innocently asked Slutskaya how she could use black skates. The budding U.S. superstar was 13 then, her experience too limited to understand that in the economic dislocation of post-Soviet-era Russia, a skater took anything she could get.
This was the 1994 world junior championships in Colorado Springs. Slutskaya, 14, had yet to establish herself as a skater worthy of greater consideration from Russia’s sports authorities.
The next thing Kwan noticed about Slutskaya seemed even more unusual. Before she began her competitive performances, the Russian would kiss what looked to Kwan like a small doll and then place it on the ice next to the boards.
“That leaves an impression,” Kwan said recently, when asked for her first impressions of Slutskaya.
The doll actually was a rubber toy. On a train ride to a competition in Russia, Slutskaya’s coach, Zhanna Gromova, had put three toys on a table and asked the skater to pick one for good luck. Slutskaya chose an orange dog.
“You could tell it was a superstition, a little something to protect her,” Kwan said. “I guess it gave her strength.”
Kwan does not remember seeing the toy again after the 1994 world junior meet, her first competition against Slutskaya, who won bronze to Kwan’s gold. It turns out the dog soon broke.
But the competition between the two teenagers that began in Colorado Springs has lasted 11 years, making it the longest such rivalry in the history of their sport. Kwan, 24, and Slutskaya, 26, have been together on senior world championship podiums five times, more than any other two women.
“I am really happy we can compete such a long time,” Slutskaya said.
When they meet this week at the 2005 world championships in Slutskaya’s hometown of Moscow, Kwan will be trying to win her sixth world title and 10th world medal, Slutskaya her second title and sixth medal.
“These two skaters have been on the pedestal side-by-side for many years, and this of course brings real theater and acuity to competitions,” Gromova said. “[They are] unique skaters, two very different persons, brilliant persons–two equals.”
Neither has won an Olympic title, a shared frustration that brought them even closer together after Slutskaya was second and Kwan third behind Sarah Hughes of the United States three years ago. Each was singularly disconsolate for several minutes after the free skate final at the 2002 Winter Olympics, but they cheered each other up with a combination of gallows humor and pure silliness while walking to the medalists’ news conference.
That happened again at last year’s world meet, where Kwan vainly struggled to defend her title–she finished third–and Slutskaya was happy to get ninth, her worst finish ever, after struggling through a season in which she had been seriously ill.
As they drew for starting order in the final free skate, Slutskaya looked at Kwan and said, “Oh, well, you won five times.”
“We’ve gone through a lot and seen each other through so many ups and downs,” Kwan said.
They have become “women of a certain age” in a sport where the past three Olympic champions were 16 or younger. Both retain a child’s exuberance about skating that, at least in Slutskaya’s case, belies personal and family health problems that have lent serious overtones to her continued presence in the sport and kept financial considerations paramount in her life.
Slutskaya, married since 1999 to physical education teacher Sergei Mikheev, keeps skating not only because she remains one of the world’s best but to help pay medical bills for her mother and herself.
Her mother, Natalya, undergoes dialysis three times a week as she waits for a kidney transplant. Slutskaya sometimes sees a doctor every three days to deal with her own symptoms from a frequently debilitating blood vessel disorder diagnosed 16 months ago as Churg Strauss syndrome.
Slutskaya, an only child, felt well enough to compete just once last season, at the world meet. She still did all 18 shows on the Champions on Ice tour, which provided nearly all her income during the year.
“I did get the sense she was out there skating for her mom,” Kwan said. “She is doing the best she can as a daughter.
“I can’t imagine what it is like to have that pressure on you. . . . You really put everything into perspective when your mother is in the hospital, and you are fighting with your own health and the payments.”
Slutskaya does not lack for perspective. A friend on the Champions on Ice tour wanted her to have a new outfit for an evening charity function and offered to pay for the clothes at a high-end New York department store. Slutskaya looked at a few price tags and told her shopping companion it was simply too much money to spend on clothes.
Slutskaya has been well enough this season to win the Grand Prix Final, two Grand Prix meets, a pro-am, the Russian championships and the European championships. Her sixth European title, matching Katarina Witt’s total, came amid controversy that Slutskaya was prejudged the winner rather than given the place she deserved after a badly flawed free skate.
“I don’t know who is telling you this,” Slutskaya said. “Everyone had mistakes, and I was better. That’s it.”
There is no doubt Slutskaya’s European performance was much poorer than her other efforts this season. The medicines she takes–including a corticosteroid and an anti-ulcer drug–frequently leave her exhausted.
By the European meet in late January, she also was worn down by having five competitions in 2 1/2 months, involving two jet-lag intensive trips to China and one to the U.S.
“Sometimes I am OK because I take a lot of pills,” Slutskaya said. “Sometimes in the morning I don’t want to wake up because my body hurts so much.”
Kwan has done only the tour, three pro-am competitions and the U.S. championships since last year’s world meet. After years of pounding her body, she can afford to minimize the risk of soreness and injury by limiting her competitions.
Slutskaya missed the 2003 world championships because of her mother’s illness. In preparing for the next season, she found herself having breathing problems with what she thought was bronchitis. It was only after her arms and legs began to bruise and swell that doctors were able to pinpoint the problem.
Her primary doctor, rheumatologist Oleg Krivosheev of Moscow’s Tareyev Hospital, declined to comment for this story, citing doctor-patient confidentiality.
“I always believed I can skate again,” Slutskaya said. “Sometimes, when I was feeling so bad, I just tried to fight with my thoughts. I said, `Irina, stop. You will skate, maybe later.”‘
Doctors advised her to take a complete rest. She found staying at home left her too depressed. So Slutskaya decided to get as ready as she could for last year’s world meet in Germany, knowing she was far from medal-contending form but wanting to show the world she was still alive.
Slutskaya was a shell of the skater she had been, but her smile still was full enough to light up the rink.
“I am really glad she has made a comeback,” Kwan said. “I never doubted for one moment she would be back.”
The comeback nearly was derailed when Slutskaya twisted a knee when she fell doing a layback spin two weeks before her first Grand Prix meet. She was unable to walk for a week.
Once that injury was behind her, Slutskaya started rolling off victories. She easily beat the reigning world, European and Russian champions at Cup of Russia, beat the world champion again in the Grand Prix final in China, then beat Kwan at the pro-am.
“I was so happy at worlds last year that I could compete again, but I was much happier when I understand I can win again,” Slutskaya said.
The effects of the Churg Strauss and the medications still leave her tired and weak at times. Slutskaya thinks she no longer will need the medication when she stops competing, probably after the 2006 Winter Olympics. She will do the entire Champions on Ice tour, which includes an April 10 stop at the United Center, again this year.
“Now I have so much stress, and this is so bad for my health,” she said. “I don’t know why one day I feel good, one day not so good.”
She has color-coordinated skates now, and her dog is a 4-year-old Akita, Bars, that she bought in the U.S. in 2000. The Akita, a big, powerful breed, is known for its protective instincts.
So the talisman Kwan saw Slutskaya put on the rink a decade ago simply has become larger in life. Irina Slutskaya needs even more strength off the ice than on it.
Kwan vs. Slutskaya
How Michelle Kwan (MK) and Irina Slutskaya (IS) have fared in head-to-head competition:
WINTER OLYMPICS
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YR MK IS
2002 3 2
1998 2 5
GRAND PRIX FINAL
YR MK IS
2002 2 1
2001 2 1
2000 2 1
1997 2 3
1996 1 2
WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP
YR MK IS
2004 3 9
2003 1 DNC
2002 2 1
2001 1 2
2000 1 2
1999 2 DNC
1998 1 2
1997 2 4
1996 1 3
1995 4 7
WORLD JUNIOR CHAMPIONSHIP
YR MK IS
1994 1 3
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