For nearly a month before, during and after the Salt Lake Olympics, their faces were everywhere.
Five months later, Jamie Sale and David Pelletier are simply remembered as "the Canadians," the skating pairs co-gold medalists who were at the center of an Olympic-size brouhaha and then suddenly disappeared in yet another saga of confusion.
Sale and Pelletier have performed in only one major skating show since the Olympics — a homecoming event in March in Edmonton, Alberta, which was televised in Canada.
While figure skating heroes like Sarah Hughes, Michelle Kwan and Yelena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze, with whom Sale and Pelletier shared the gold medal, were crisscrossing the continent, Sale and Pelletier were at home grappling with the trappings of instant fame. They were hiring and firing agents, attempting to create their own tour and ultimately scrapping those plans.
The one thing they were not doing was what they do best — skating.
"We just had an unfortunate time," Sale said last week from the home she and Pelletier recently moved into in Edmonton. "We were led in a direction that we did not want to be led in. We know our reputation isn't ruined. We do miss skating, and we did miss being on tour this summer.
"It's weird not being on tour. But it's almost a blessing in disguise. We have a great manager now, and we've gotten to do so many other things. It hasn't been a waste of time." That, of course, depends on whom you ask.
Had they joined Tom Collins' tour, Champions on Ice, they could have earned close to $1 million this summer. Not only did they lose financially, but Collins said they also lost precious visibility.
"They're out of the loop completely now," he said. "They've disappeared. They could have done very, very well, but now it's too late. The Olympics are a very short-lived thing. After six months, if a skater or skaters don't promote themselves, it's very difficult. I don't think they can ever recoup what they've lost."
After months of unsuccessful negotiations with the Stars on Ice tour and Collins' Champions on Ice, Sale and Pelletier decided in May to hire a new agent, Robert Steadward, Sale's longtime family friend and her former sports psychologist. Soon afterward, they signed a four-year deal with Stars on Ice, produced by the sports agency IMG. In doing so, the couple is no longer eligible to compete in the world championships or defend its title in the 2006 Olympics. Stars on Ice begins rehearsals in September, and the tour starts in November.
For Sale and Pelletier, signing with Stars on Ice was one of their first steps forward in many months. "What we went through, no one really knows, " Pelletier said. "In this situation, we lost control. Now we're trying to take it back."
Their story is about the perils that accompany instant success, the web of agents and promoters and handlers who are eager to offer advice — good and bad — and how all of them wanted to get their hands in a strike-while-it's-hot pot.
"They were such a hot item and so many people wanted a piece of the action," their coach, Jan Ullmark, said. "A couple of days after they got the gold medal, they came up to me and said, "We just want to go home.' They wanted things to be normal. I just laughed. I said, "Things aren't going to be normal for a long time.' "
Sale said: "You just can't prepare for this. It was a real test of our patience, and we learned a lot about ourselves. We were pushed to the limit, and you lose your identity."
Many in the skating community sensed trouble was brewing in the Canadian camp nearly a year before the Olympics when the couple hired the agent Craig Fenech, an outsider to the figure skating world, who had been working with the couple's choreographer, Lori Nichol.
"I don't know anything about skating," Fenech said he had told Sale and Pelletier. "But that's OK because you're not hiring me to tell you how to skate."
After watching the couple win the world championships in Vancouver, British Columbia, Fenech realized he had legitimate Olympic gold medal contenders on his hands. Not only could they skate, but they also had charisma, good looks and charm.
"I believed Americans would adopt them like they were from Minnesota," Fenech said.
But in the months leading up to the Games, Fenech's relationships with Collins and IMG had already soured. In skating, there are only two franchises, and Fenech was quickly burning bridges with both.
Just before the Olympics, Fenech said, he turned down offers from both tours. Collins and IMG each offered Sale and Pelletier similar deals, an estimated $4,000 per show, typical for top pairs teams. In the economy of figure skating, an American female champion is considered the jackpot, garnering anywhere between $10,000 and $15,000 per night.
"I thought they'd win over the U.S. and Canadian fans and then they would have more leverage, more market power," Fenech said.
Sale and Pelletier not only won the gold, but they also won over the hearts and sympathies of the American public. They could not go anywhere in Salt Lake City without being photographed.
Fenech had this issue to grapple with on the spot: Exactly how does one respond to instant fame? As everyone involved found out, you can't.
"It was just too much," Ullmark, their coach, said. "It put a lot of stress on their relationship, too. We're all novices in the sense of dealing with this. When a question comes up instantly, one answers one way and the other wants to answer it another way. There's no chance to sit and discuss things. It was an explosion."
Soon after the Olympics, Fenech tried to create a new tour that Sale and Pelletier would headline. Fenech said the couple would have owned 50 percent of the tour. This would have been a major coup for skaters; most are free agents, who are hired by the tour owners.
Collins and IMG were miffed, but at the same time neither believed that Sale and Pelletier's tour would become a reality.
"I don't think any skater could put on their own tour, and to try to do it in just four weeks is just impossible," Collins said.
"You have to do the scheduling, the advertising, all that stuff," said Collins, who is already planning his post-Olympic tour in 2006. "There was no thought put into this. Craig just didn't understand the business."
Sale and Pelletier said that they had not wanted to do their own tour in the first place.
"It was never our idea to do our own tour," Pelletier said. "One day, we woke up and heard on the radio that Sale and Pelletier are looking to do a 45-city tour. That's how we first heard about it."
All the while, Fenech continued to try to negotiate deals for Sale and Pelletier to skate in the two established tours. "I read that I asked for $30,000 per show," Fenech said. "People with an ax to grind were spreading those numbers and putting pressure on Jamie and David."
Soon, Collins had to get his show started, and when no deal could be agreed to, he decided to forge ahead without Sale and Pelletier.
Fenech said part of the problem was that he was perceived as an outsider by the tight-knit skating community. "People were self-interested and wanted them to do either Tommy's tour or Stars on Ice," Fenech said. "I think Jamie and David had a chance to transcend skating."
Fenech declined to say how much Sale and Pelletier could have earned had they been able to mount their own tour, but he said, "You can speculate as wildly as you like, but I can safely say it would have been seven figures."
Ultimately, the grand plans for Sale and Pelletier's tour collapsed. Among the reasons, Fenech said, was that the two established tours have restrictive clauses in their contracts with arenas, making it virtually impossible for him to schedule dates for Sale and Pelletier's tour.
Fenech resigned in May, but Sale and Pelletier said the parting was mutual. Fenech said there were too many "back channels," too many people who were negotiating directly with Sale and Pelletier, making his role as an intermediary meaningless.
Back in Edmonton, Sale and Pelletier have been busy moving into their new house and visiting relatives and friends. Soon, they will begin rehearsals for the Stars on Ice tour.
Stars on Ice also signed the Russian team of Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze, and Byron Allen, IMG's senior vice president for winter sports and the producer of Stars on Ice, hinted that the Russians and Canadians might skate in routines together.
"We've surrounded ourselves with great people," Sale said. "We're excited about skating with Stars on Ice and developing another side of our skating."