The Winter Olympics do not begin until Bonnie Blair skates. You can have all the Bjorns and Sigrids winning all the medals you want, but until our Bonnie gets her gold, this is just a lot of bad clothes and lost buses.
Blair has been doing this now for 10 years, running on water, which is possible if it is frozen, and doing it faster than anyone else.
So used to seeing her kissing her medals for the cameras are we that when she did it again Saturday, it looked less like pleasure than posing.
She took her victory lap for winning her third Olympic 500 meters much more slowly than the actual race-:39.25, for those keeping score at home-lit by a cool spotlight and accompanied by a courteous orchestra.
This is as close to glamor as a speedskater gets, and Blair has earned it all. But wasn’t it much more authentic when she was eating peanut-butter sandwiches and wiping her own nose? She eats lobster without a bib now.
Freshness has given away to legend, and not without cost. We first saw her as our kid sister, and now she seems more like a spinster aunt.
Her family and friends, once a handful, are now an entourage, a congregation in garish gold hats urging Bonnie on, uniformed and self-absorbed, sponsored and monikered, the “Blair Bunch.”
Spontaneity is the victim of choreography.
On her victory lap, Blair found, conveniently, an American flag to tote, and she sang the national anthem along with the music. She was no doubt sincere, but the impression was more like it was her turn at a karaoke bar.
Numbing familiarity is the price Blair pays for making so much history, and she is what the Olympics have become, not a special show as much as just another stop along the circuit, be it skaters or skiers.
It is painful to see Brian Boitano wobble and Katarina Witt flirt behind Blanche DuBois’ makeup, and Marc Girardelli clatter down the mountain in old man’s time.
Maybe there ought to be term limits on the Olympics as on politicians, one Olympiad and out. Secretariat got only one chance. Dan Jansen got almost a dozen.
“I can’t keep going on and on and on,” Blair said. “I’m definitely not getting any younger.”
By actual calendar, Blair will be 30 in a month, but it is not age as much as redundancy that dulls the appreciation of her achievement, still great and laudable.
The silver medalist from Canada, Susan Auch, seemed genuinely more elated to be second than Blair did to be first. This was Auch’s first medal, while Blair has five-four golds and a bronze-with prospects for more in two more races.
“My name under Bonnie’s is very exciting,” Auch said.
The bronze medalist, German teenager Franziska Schenk, was 8 when Blair skated in her first Olympics in Sarajevo. Blair since has withstood the natural challenge of the Dutch and the artificial challenge of the Chinese.
Her first Olympic arena is now kindling and her last might, by design, be turned right-side up and sailed off to fight the Danes, or whatever the Vikings used to do.
“No one is expecting another girl will win,” said Schenk of Blair, without the proper impatience of the young trying to nudge the old out of the way.
Blair has that effect on the world she rules. She will keep at this, she said, for another year, bowing out in Milwaukee at next year’s world championships.
Nothing is quieter than the applause for doing the expected. This is the price not of chasing history, but catching it.
“I can’t think about that history part of things until it is totally over,” Blair said.
Ready when you are, Bonnie.
