King - you spoke too soon! Samantha Retrosi's crash today was awfully spectacular! Yikes!

http://cbs.sportsline.com/olympics/winter/story/9230831

Thank goodness she seems to be OK.

Dan Marino? Who's he? King Kaufman talks about him as if he's universally known, but I've never heard of him. To me, he sounds like a guy who makes pizza. This probably seems impossible to the sports fans who read this column, but to someone who's not a football fan, the name means nothing. The only football player I can think of off hand is Joe Namath, and that's because he was in a bunch of commercials. Dan Marino is "famous" to football fans, not to non-fans. It's just that there are a lot of football fans, so sports fans just assume he's "universally" known. Most people who aren't football fans only know football players because they do commercials or appear in the tabloids, not because of the way they play.

It's the same for skating. Whether Michelle Kwan will become famous outside of "skating fans" probably has more to do with her endorsement deals and her public image than the number of medals she won. Tara Lipinski disappeared off the earth, while Nancy Kerrigan (who never won a gold medal either) parlayed her moment of infamy into commercials and commentating jobs, which kept her in the public eye. Kerrigan is certainly better known than Oksana Baiul, who won the gold medal that year.

Only a few figure skaters ever become famous outside of the figure skating world. People vaguely remember their names, but most of them disappear into obscurity - gold medals or not. If Michelle Kwan becomes a skating "celebrity", she will probably be remembered longer because of this scandal, not in spite of it.

... because I feel like this debate has played out and has been reduced to shrill name-calling and its equivalents.

scottwmackey: 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.

That is interesting! It's pretty much the exact opposite of what I said, but it's interesting that you'd either misread me so badly or make the effort to twist my words.

What I wrote: "In sports that really only matter at the Olympics, you're judged by how you do at the Olympics."

And: "A better comparison for Kwan would be an all-time great boxer who never won a world championship." So it looks like I think pro world championships are the measure of a boxer, no?

Also, in the letters section, I wrote, "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."

Rob Anderson: Allen Berra is twice the writer Kaufman is, and three times the sports writer.

It's Allen Barra, with an a, who's twice the writer and three times the sportswriter I am.

Thanks King for this article. I was watching the love fest for Kwan last night and could not believe what i was hearing. They are talking about a person that never won the top event in there (individual) sport as an all time great. Even in team sports not winning the top event is reason not to crown the person an all time great look at Marino for example. Marino is the discussion but almost no one would put him above Elway or Montana. Everyone in the Discussion for all time greatest basketball players has won a ring same as hockey.

Some one mentioned Pete Sampras and this is an apt analogy but not the way they used it or even the way you used it King. Kwans winning of all the world championships is much like winning a ton of Aussie Opens its nice but to be an all time great in Tennis you must win Wimbledon and the US Open.

Oh and one last thing how does Christine Brennan have so many accounts? Well i actually blame her for much of this over hyping of Kwan. Brennan can not go two syllables with out mentioning Kwan and her greatness and how she can do no wrong.

It's too bad Shaun White was overshadowed by Michelle Kwan. I don't know much about these Olympics, but I doubt there's a more dominant athlete at these games. He's won every event he's entered this year, including sweeping the X Games.

He's also a great personality. He's goofy, but still sincere. The interview with him after he won and his family mobbed him was a classic. The way he was choking up and laughing about it without dismissing it was sweet.

White's comment about the Olympics being like the X Games times 10 was pretty funny. But the X Games is still a bigger deal to snowboarders than the Olympics--especially since the Olympics are so behind the times with their events. Slopstyle is the premiere event in snowboarding. It's way more interesting, creative, and prestigious among boarders than the half-pipe.

Instead of adding slopstyle, this year the Olympics adds boarder-cross, which the X Games dropped several years ago. White has won the last 3 X Games slopstyles, and 2 out of 3 half-pipes.

...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.

With all due respect, King, this is simply a terrible analogy. There are 4 majors every year in both golf and tennis, versus an Olympic competition that rolls around every four years. That means that Phil M, when he won his first major after a dozen years on the tour, was probably approaching his 50th major event. Even if you make the silly argument that a tennis player needs both the US Open (ruling out Bjorn Borg and his 11 major titles) and Wimbledon (ruling out Ivan Lendl and his 8 major titles), they get an annual chance at each, usually a dozen or so in a long career.

The boxing analogy doesn't quite fit, either, as you are describing (basically) a world class amateur that doesn't make a terrific transition to the pros. Your Golden Gloves/Olympic boxer that doesn't make the grade as a pro is basically, well, Christian Laettner. There is nothing terribly unusual about someone that can't make the next step in any sport. As I understand it, Kwan beat Olympic level competitors on a regular basis.

I have no compunction about taking the word of "skating insiders" about her relative place in history here. After all, if some Schmoe that only watched enough baseball to catch every fourth World Series started telling me that Orel Hershiser was the greatest pitcher of all time, I'd laugh at him, catch my breath, and laugh some more. If Bill James makes a case for Walter Johnson, I'll look it up. The fact that un-knowledgable people say she is not a "great" isn't a good measure, especially based on a very loose definition of failure (Silver).

[Sorry for the next day postings. Sometimes, that's just when I finally get to sit down and type.]