Suzanne Lainson <slainson@...> writes:

> I don't think anyone figured Bobek would end up being more notorious
> than Harding, but if she ends up in prison for leading a meth ring,
> then I think she has trumped Harding.
>
> And a few folks, way back when, wondered why some of us thought so
> highly of Kwan even though she didn't win Olympic gold.

Heh. It seems to me that even just staying out of trouble with the
police is a pretty low bar to set on the decency scale. :-P

From the stories I used to hear about Bobek during her competitive
days, I used to think that she was burning through life at such a
reckless pace that she wasn't even going to live long enough to see
30; if the drugs and drinking didn't get her, it was going to be AIDS
or something else. Well, since she's made it to 31, she proved me
wrong about that.... but geez, her life must be a wreck for her to
have gotten into this mess. :-(

Anyway.... Christopher Bowman told Christine Brennan in 1995 that
he'd been arrested 27 times already by that point and goodness knows
how many more times he got himself into trouble before he died. Yet,
we never really heard anything about his career as a criminal in the
press except when he talked about it himself. Why has Bobek's arrest
gotten so much more publicity? When Rudy Galindo, Oksana Baiul, and
Alexei Yagudin were each picked up on DUI charges, we heard about
that, but they were all at or near the peak of their fame when that
happened, and Bobek is at least a dozen years removed. We did hear
about Wolfgang Schwarz but that's really the only case of
long-ago-famous skater making the news because of criminal charges
that I can recall. I'm willing to bet there are others out there we
just haven't heard about.

-Sandra the cynic