Johnny Weir is America’s greatest athlete

Here's Johnny (Image by Getty Images via Daylife)

I know I said I’d never write about the Olympics again but of course I was lying. You knew that, right? Because you’re the kind of hip, sophisticated reader who can tell when a guy is in anything-for-a-laugh mode. I sensed that about you immediately and I’m usually right about such things. Thus you also perceive that the headline above was just to get your attention and not at all meant to be taken seriously.

I’m at the gym pedaling furiously to nowhere when I notice Kornheiser on several screens talking about the ice skating, so I plug in.

I sort of almost know Kornheiser. We worked for the same newspaper (Newsday) back in the, well…a long time ago, and for a while we had parents in the same condo near Fort Lauderdale. So he’s my favorite sports commentator, both because I sort of almost know him and because I don’t watch any other sports commentators.

Also, Kornheiser is the kind of name Woody Allen would use in a New Yorker piece.

Tony is more evolved than his partner, who says these guys may be terrific athletes but when he sees someone wearing feathers he’s automatically hitting the remote, never mind they can spin four times in the air and land backwards on one skate. But the partner can be forgiven as he’s probably an ex-athlete and they have to do the macho dance or have wet towels snapped at them next time they visit the locker room.

What tickles me is when Kornheiser launches into a bit about how you’ve got to do the quadruple if you want to win the gold. This is apparently a big controversy in the men’s division. The Russian guy, Malenkov or Khrushchev or something like that, stated, and I quote him exactly, “Ptui on you flaming wimps who are not doing the quadruple! You go dress in women’s locker room! I spit on the babushka of your maternal grandmother. I eat your turnip for lunch!”

Don’t ask me the quadruple what? I couldn’t tell you. I don’t understand how anyone can even tell the quadruple from the triple.

What Brezhnev was doing there, Kornheiser says, was psyching out his opponents, which all the great athletes do, so good for him. Kornheiser’s no fool. If you want to do a successful sports show, you’ve got to have a big fat opinion on everything, figure skating included. Maybe even ice dancing. You also need a partner who has the opposite opinions.

Johnny Weir didn’t wear feathers but he did have a tassel flagrantly attached to his costume. I personally prefer costumes to uniforms on athletes because it gives the viewer one more thing to make fun of. I also like that skaters compete to music. I feel that pro football and basketball could benefit greatly from both these ideas and should adopt them immediately.

Johnny Weir is the Adam Lambert of the figure-skating world. Or maybe the Lady Gaga. Kornheiser said Johnny was beautiful to watch but the partner grimaced and said that’s not the word he would use. To me what’s really impressive about Weir is that he taught himself Russian after he fell in love with Russian skating and can now speak it so fluently that he can order a blini in Brooklyn.

If that’s true, it’s a bigger wow in my book than Andropov doing his quadruple.