Turin, Italy 2006 Winter Olympic Games

Olympic Figure Skating Analysis

TURIN, Italy – This time the tears came for all the right reasons, signaling all the right emotions. Silvia Fontana would leave the Palavela ice in tears for the second time in three nights but this time it would be for joy, for perseverance, for self-confidence, for pride and mostly for her Italy.

"It was my Olympic moment," she said.

It was, in many ways, everyone's.

The Olympics always get hijacked – by television, by marketers, by poor sportsmanship, by controversies, by the pressure that makes athletes feel that you don't win silver as much as you lose gold. It happens. But so do comeback performances such as Silvia Fontana's Thursday to remind why this is still such a unique, special event.

You can hardly skate worse than Fontana had Tuesday in the ladies' short program. She plodded and fell in a routine that finished 23rd out of the 24 skaters who made the cut, so far behind Sasha and Irina and Shizuka there was nothing to do but cry. And so she did.

"I'm sorry to all of Italy," she said in embarrassment after.

Italy was the only reason she was here, though. Silvia Fontana was 29, retired for over three years from competitive skating when she heard the call. Figure skating is not popular here, but the host country must compete in all the Games.

Italy already had one great competing – Carolina Kostner – and now it beckoned for its old champion Fontana to try again. The girl from Rome couldn't resist the lure. She knew she would never contend for a medal against all of the flexible teenagers and in-their-prime stars. She was pushing 30 in a sport that doesn't always allow you to push 20.

But she could enjoy the swell of emotion that could come from competing in her homeland, in front of her fellow Italians, for Italy. She got caught up in it.

She was living in the United States by then, married to retired American skater John Zimmerman, who provided skating analysis for Yahoo! Sports during the games. She started training again in Hackensack, N.J., just nine months ago. It was slow at first. It was slow at second. But the gains came. So too did the injuries, including one less than a month ago.

But she had dreamed of skating again. She had promised Italy she would try. And so on Tuesday she did. And felt like she had failed.

"I was so nervous," she said.

The Italian crowd cheered for her anyway. They hardly cared that she had fallen, that she had misstepped. They knew what she was trying to do, why she was there. It wasn't about the medal. It was about Italy.

"I didn't regret trying," she said. "I regretted my skate for the reason of being timid, a little bit more tentative. That is not a great way to go into competition."

So for two days she vowed to be confident in the face of a frightening task. The free skate is longer, often more difficult – four minutes on the ice, four minutes in the spotlight. She would have to skate better.

She was the first to take the ice, the ultimate sign of non-contention – Irina Slutskaya wouldn't skate for nearly four hours. The crowd went nuts anyway. She smiled, settled herself and attacked the program. With each completed jump the fans roared. With each beautiful spin they cheered. With each minute, Fontana's smile beamed brighter.

She wasn't going to move up in the standings, but she was skating like an Olympian. When she finished in triumph, Italy roared. Fontana stood and cried, hands over her face at center ice, bawling for all the right reasons.

"It is funny, my program was not very difficult for [Olympic] standards," she said Saturday. "But my standards were for that one moment. It was my own personal medal."

The ensuing two days have been a scramble. Suddenly Fontana was famous. Suddenly she was beloved. The Italians were moved by the comeback, by the effort, by the simple ideals she represented. She was not one of the Italian athletes whose spurred-on emotion had pushed the country to a record 10 medals here, including four golds.

But Silvia Fontana couldn't have represented her proud homeland more perfectly.

And everyone wanted to let her know. She was at cafe in downtown Turin Friday with her husband and U.S. ice dancing silver medalists Tanith Belbin and Benjamin Agosto. They were famous faces of these games, yet over and over people kept coming up to thank Fontana, to meet her, to get her to sign something.

"It felt awkward, people coming to me," she said. "I am thinking, 'Here are silver medalists beside me.' [It's just been a] lot of warmth and love."

It was the woman who won nothing, who had apologized to her nation, who had picked herself up off the ice, who had finished in 22nd place, who had captured the hearts and reminded everyone the true ideals of the games that they wanted to celebrate.

She cried at center ice twice in two nights. She said wouldn't change a thing.

"Both feelings," she said, "made it sweeter."

Updated on Saturday, Feb 25, 2006 5:57 pm, EST

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