In Spite Of Tremendous Pressure, Sumners Discovers Silver Lining Of Her Life After Winter Olympics

HAMAR, Norway - Ten minutes before her long program in Sarajevo, Rosalynn Sumners didn't care anymore.

The 4 1/2 minutes she had waited for, prepared for, sacrificed for, were here and all she could think about was getting on and off the ice as quickly and painlessly as possible.

Awaiting her turn on the world stage, the gold medal, Katarina Witt, the Olympic Games, none of it seemed to matter.

That is what the pressure of figure skating does to the young. Ten years ago in the Winter Olympics, Sumners was the great American hope. The Edmonds skater was defending world champion. But she was only 19.

"At that point, I just wanted it over," said Sumners, who will be a figure-skating analyst for TBS during the Winter Olympics. "The pressure was so great that I knew when it came time to skate, it was going to be painful, whatever happened.

"Maybe I was feeling the pressure so much that I decided if I didn't care, it wouldn't hurt so much.

"It was so hard, so I told myself I didn't care and it eased the pain at the time."

In the final seconds of what might have been her gold-medal performance, Sumners turned a triple toe loop into a double and a double axel into a single. The damage was done.

She got the silver medal. Witt got the gold and 35,000 love letters.

But 10 years later, Sumners doesn't have time for the pain. There is life after the silver medal, a very good life. A professional skater, Sumners still performs in ice shows and in some professional competitions.

The silver medal has its rewards, something an ex-husband of a certain figure skater might consider the next time he tries to injure the competition.

"I didn't suffer at all because of the silver," says Sumners, who soon will turn 30. "Sometimes I think it was to my advantage to finish second. There can only be one star in an ice show, but they always need supporting skaters. Number two always gets invited to the shows."

Sumners was beaten by an electric, elegant skater from what was then East Germany. In Sarajevo, a star was born. Four years later, Witt successfully defended her gold medal in Calgary.

Now, six years after her second gold, Witt will compete against the young and the restless - Oksana Baiul, Surya Bonaly, Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding - for one last chance at a medal. It seems an impossible dream.

"I have every ounce of shock, well, maybe more amazement, that Katarina would want to go back and put herself in this position," Sumners says. "It's something I've never even considered.

"I know she and Brian (Boitano) are real good friends and very competitive against each other. Maybe she wasn't going to let Brian come back without her trying it again, too.

"Maybe she saw the popularity Kristi Yamaguchi has in the shows and thought she'd better get back in the spotlight. She'll be lucky if she finishes in the top 10, but at least the pressure's off. Obviously, all the attention is on Tonya and Nancy."

Sumners knows Harding well. She watched her growing up in Northwest skating competitions. They had the same choreographer, Barbara Flowers.

You get the feeling Sumners has great respect for Harding the athlete, but little respect for Harding the person. Sumners saw Harding's lack of compassion during Flowers' painful death from bone cancer.

"Tonya has no regard for people," said Sumners, who considered Flowers her second mother. "She had no respect for Barbara's feelings. When Barbara was in all of that pain, Tonya never showed any feeling for her. She never showed any compassion.

"Her ex-husband (Jeff Gillooly) owed Barbara money, but all Barbara got was a nasty letter from Jeff. I know Tonya's had a hard time, but at some point, you have to take responsibility for your actions. Tonya hasn't done that."

Sumners no longer is interested in landing the knee-wrenching triple jumps. She jokes she is in the "chiffon period" of her career. There is more emphasis on the artistic, less on the technical.

It is someone else's time to stand in the wings and wait for the call to the 4 1/2 minutes of her life.

Kerrigan? Harding?

"I think Nancy will be on the podium somewhere after it's over," Sumners said. "But Lord knows what will happen if Tonya's on the podium, too."