"A better comparison for Kwan would be an all-time great boxer who never won a world championship."

Except that Kwan won the championship five times. How many other skaters won the world championship five times? Let's not forget this is against the exact same competition as in the Olympics.

Gross Misrepresentation. Drunken College Students invented the Skeleton. Except, back in the day, it was called Headbutt. The snowbank, the keg stack, the chalet wall, a fellow Headbutter coming the other way (a little known and short-lived variant on Headbutt called 'Dead'), these are just details, but the point is as founding member of the Dunken College Students Winter Games, I would thank you to take more care in future unless you wish to be forcibly inducted into the Take-off-Your-Pants-And-Slide-On-Your-Ass-Into-A-Snowbank Eventing Team.

So, according to King's logic, Ali would not be remembered as one of the greatest boxers of all time had he not won the Olympic gold. Interesting.

To comment on Kwans looks as attractive, but not too attractive etc... is just odd. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I suppose, but I think shes damn attractive. More so then Witt ,or any others skaters you've mentioned. Maybe you just have a bias against Asian women? It was an odd statement to make at any rate, and one you probably would not have made if talking about a male athlete. Even when talking about figure skating, a sport judged partially on "beauty", it seemed to be in bad taste.

Dear King,

You love watching the luge. You probably watched all four runs. You probably would have watched them if you weren't a columnist and somewhat required to watch them. Luge is like curling. When described it's absurd, but there is hypnotic quality to it that keeps you watching. I bet by the final run you were leaning slightly left and right on the couch, in sync with the turns on the course.

The quote you used is the reason I love watching the luge: '"Look how flat and relaxed he is on the sled!" the announcers will say as a luger zooms down the course on his back, motionless.' Relaxed and motionless is incredible for the situation. Travel at 85 mph in an ice chute with only inches of space on either side. Don't look where you are going. Don't drive away from the walls. Don't move. Shift a should or a foot and you've gone from first to forty-third. It's an incredible skill, and really fun to watch.

And if you don't think the crashes are spectacular, watch the women's singles luge today. You'll see two things that will change your mind.

Love,

There is a huge opportunity being missed in the marketing of the luge event, for men at least. Instead of healthy college-aged kids speeding through the course, their necks craned to see where they're going, they should have middle-aged and older men who take Viagra. Given the clothing that is worn, the slightest arousal would make it all the harder to see and steer, making for some spectacular wipeouts.

A special exception would have to be made in the doping policy, but with the endorsement potential and additional dollars coming into the games, I'm confident they could work it out.

Non-Dan Marino/Ted Williams example

Pete Sampras, he never won the French Open.

Thanks for reminding me of another good analogy. I actually don't think Sampras fits just for not winning the French, but a good analogy would be a tennis player or a golfer who wins all sorts of tournaments, is the leading money-winner year in and year out, say, and never wins a major tournament. The closest thing to Kwan that I can think of in this sense would be Phil Mickelson before he finally won that Masters a few years ago.

You can be the greatest golfer or tennis player in history all the other weeks of the year, but if you don't win a few majors, you're not going to be considered an all-time great. You're going to be remembered for not winning the majors.

is it that difficult that in a sport where teens dominate Michelle Kwan is a has been? Her demeanor and her personality may well be fantastic but that is not the object of the exercize: she was not competing to be a hostess but to skate. She used these nice but, in this case, irrelevant traits to get herself into a competition that she was unable to complete...

What is the cost of that capricious whim? Sara Hughes who probably had one chance of getting into the Olympics at the prime of the age for her sport who now has to go to Torino and compete without having had the advantage of acclimating herself to the town, jet-lag, ice conditions etc...

To satisfy the whims of a declining old buddy (who already has had her chances), the skating authorities were quite willing to trample the potential of another promising skater!

Sport, at least skating, a meritocracy or as a political game?...

Tyler: King said that Kwan is attractive, but not "intimidatingly so".

Hey King, care to tell us what the hell that means?

Sure. Maybe off-puttingly would have been a better word than intimidatingly. What I mean is she's an attractive enough person, but she's not so drop-dead gorgeous that you find yourself rooting against her, in the sense that, in Wilt Chamberlain's famous words, you root against Goliath. There's not that Schadenfreude of seeing the talented AND awesomely pretty girl get hers. I was talking about how it's easy to root for her. She's more of an everywoman than a too-pretty ice queen. I think the widespread, though not unanimous, dislike for Katarina Witt two decades ago was complicated -- there were elements of Cold War rivalries there, and also a perception that she wasn't as talented a skater as the American girl, Debi Thomas, but just knew how to push the judges' buttons -- but part of it was that she was just kind of a stunner. There's such a thing, in certain contexts -- not many, I'll admit -- as being too good-looking.

And: What Stepbaker said. Kwan was a great skater who, when the sport's biggest spotlight was on, choked. That has to be taken into account as you assess her. World titles and national titles are nice, but the Olympics are where it's at for most of the sports at the Olympics. The exceptions are those sports whose top participants look at the Olympics as just another event, or even an exhibition. Off the top of my head, basketball, hockey, soccer, tennis, baseball when there was baseball. Boxing is somewhat in this category.

I believe the boxing analogy is right on. Kwan is the equivalent of a boxer who won the Olympic gold medal, say, lots of amateur titles, and beat everyone around as a pro, but lost every pro championship fight. Yeah, all those other things are nice, and that person can look back it his career and be proud of it and call it a success, and his fans can admire and love him, and they can even put him in a video game. But when it comes down to making that short list of the all-time greats, he's not going to be on it, because part of being an all-time great is winning on the biggest stage, and Kwan had two shots, in her prime, at the biggest stage, and she lost twice.