Nancy Kerrigan skated into the Spectrum spotlight to a rousing ovation. People applauded, snapped photographs and waved bouquets of flowers.
The capacity crowd oohed and aahed as Kerrigan entered to Mariah Carey's ballad "Hero." Twenty skaters were at Thursday night's Tour of World Figure Skating Champions event, but, judging by the welcome, most of the 17,380 came to see Kerrigan.Oksana Baiul, of Ukraine, who won the gold medal at the Winter Olympics, skated last, the headliner's spot, and she was wonderful. But Kerrigan shone brightest on this warm evening.
The fallout that followed her silver-medal performance in Lillehammer - the sore-loser label, bolting the Closing Ceremonies, the whole ice-princess thing - seems to have passed. Her image is healing nicely.
"Some media people don't want to let go (of the negative)," said Evy Scotvold, Kerrigan's coach.
"What Nancy accomplished was humongous. It was the gutsiest athletic story I've seen in my lifetime. The other stuff pales in comparison."
Kerrigan was clubbed by Tonya Harding's hit squad in January and came back to win an Olympic medal. She survived weeks of mounting pressure, doubts about her physical condition, daily twists in the Harding story that unfolded like a bad TV movie.
Take the stress that hangs across the shoulders of every Olympic athlete, which is daunting enough, and multiply that by five, then keep multiplying every day for six weeks. That's what Kerrigan faced BEFORE she got to Lillehammer.
Once there, with a record Olympic TV audience of 127 million, Kerrigan skated two of the best routines of her life. She lost the gold medal by the slimmest of margains, then let her disappointment show in a snippy remark made near an open microphone.
One gaffe led to another and, pretty soon, Kerrigan's image was in free fall. An embarrassing turn as host of "Saturday Night Live" made matters only worse.
But now Kerrigan is back doing what she does best, as part of the 70-city Tour of Skating Champions, and the public seems eager to embrace her and tell her everything is OK.
It must be a dizzying whirl: skating a featured role on the tour, flying from Florida to Washington for a visit with President Clinton Wednesday, then busing here Thursday night. Her life is about to be made into a movie (she will do her own skating, but no acting) and a Nancy Kerrigan doll is in production at Mattel.
Kerrigan has made her break with amateur skating. Last week, she made it official: no more world competitions, no Olympics in 1998. She will skate as a professional now, performing in touring shows and a few pro-am events.