To be honest, though, it never occurred to me that Sarah Hughes was capable of such majesty. Which is odd, because I actually picked the 16-year-old in NEWSWEEK last year as my upset candidate for the gold in Salt Lake City. But I suspected she might triumph by virtue of solid workmanship and unflappability. Then Hughes began to seem shaky. At the Olympic trials she took a disappointing bronze. And in Salt Lake, a pedestrian routine left her in fourth place after the short program.
Perhaps being counted out liberated Hughes that Thursday night in February. From the second she stepped onto the Delta Center ice, her performance seemed enchanted. The jumps–seven perfectly executed triples–flowed into spins, and the spins unfurled into spirals. It was seamless. And as it came to a breathless finish, Hughes’s stunned smile, the way she shook her head as if to rouse herself from a dream, mirrored the crowd’s amazement. And then there was bedlam. Afterward, Hughes would call it “the skate of my life.” But it was more than that. It was Tolstoyan.
