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Off thin ice Baiul skating on the comeback trail
Posted: Sunday December 26, 1999 10:45 PM
By Sonja Steptoe, CNN/SI (RICHMOND, Va.) -- In recent years, a succession of ever-younger champions in women's figure skating has brought ever-greater speed and intensity to all facets of the sport: the spins, the jumps and the careers. These days, the trip from prodigy status to the professional ranks to the pasture often doesn't take very long. Still, the saga of Oksana Baiul seems almost too dizzying and melodramatic to be real. Her adult life has only just begun, yet Baiul has already experienced more happiness and heartbreak, triumph and tragedy than most mortals get in a lifetime. And so at the age of 22, Baiul is staging a comeback. "I've been through a lot and I'm only 22," she says. "I just turned 22 and I'm just a kid. A child. But on the other hand, I'm not." It seems that Baiul has been searching for stability her whole life. Her father left her and her mother when she was 2. By the age of 13 her mother and her grandparents were dead. A year later, her longtime coach abandoned her for a job in Canada. "The only choice I did have then was to survive." Baiul said. "I took my skates with me and everything I had and needed to have, and it was only skates, and went to Odessa. In Odessa, she lived with skating coach Galina Zmievskaya, trained with her and Valentyn Nikolayev before striking gold at the 1994 Lillehammer games. Soon after, Baiul turned professional, trading in hard times and painful memories in the Ukraine for fame and fortune in the United States. "I didn't know what I was doing," Baiul admitted. "I was doing it because people told me I had to do it. I had to do it. I wasn't developing as a person and I think people responded to me as a money making machine." As a professional, Baiul had a fairy tale life. She earned millions of dollars. She owned a $400,000 home in Connecticut, with a Mercedes in the driveway and designer clothes in her closet. But the fairy tale came crashing down around her one January morning in 1997 when she wrecked that Mercedes, driving while intoxicated. "Probably from everything I went through, the interesting question I have is, 'Why am I still alive?'" she asks with a laugh. After the accident Baiul went into a downward spiral.
She gained weight, the quality of her skating performances declined and she was replaced on the Champions on Ice tour. She has said she suffered a breakdown, which prompted her to enter alcohol rehab this past May. She emerged two and a half months later, a recovering alcoholic. "For the first part, I would say of being at rehab, I was like, 'Oh my god what's going on with me?' Then I felt strong for myself and felt like I could go out and do what I was supposed to do. Be a kid, be a girl. Be human!" In addition to alcohol, she's also given up the flashy lifestyle. "I tried it and it wasn't working so I threw it away," Baiul said with a laugh. VALENTYN NIKOLAYEV "She trusts herself now," said her coach Nikolayev. "She knows it's really behind her now. She's not afraid of this problem now." In a way, Baiul has come full circle. She is working again with Nikolayev; but has parted with Zmievskaya and the agent who made her a 16-year-old millionaire. So, with no family and few friends to lean on, she must once again rely on herself. "I have terrible days. I have good days. But I don't respond the way I did before. I know how to deal with them. I know how to make it work. This is the best part about being a grownup person." After the Goodwill Games, the International Skating Union will decide whether Baiul can compete at the 2002 Olympics. If the answer is yes, Baiul's 24-year-old body will have to perform at least seven triple jumps during the four-minute long program to be in medal contention. But according to Nikolayev, her competitive fires seem to be burning for the challenge. "I saw her face five days ago before a competition and she was like, 'Yes! I have to do that. I will!' And I said, 'Oksana you are ready for first compassion.'" Baiul agrees. "Maybe skating isn't as good, but it is good. Maybe I'm not wearing designer clothes but that's fine with me. The point is I am still on this earth and I feel very solid and comfortable with myself. That's all I want. You know what I'm saying? That's all I want." Whether or not Baiul wins a medal at the Goodwill Games or competes at Salt Lake City in 2002, the fact that she has picked herself up after her disastrous fall means that a happy ending to her soap-opera-script of a life is still possible.
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