I love watching the Olympic men’s figure skating events. It’s just about the only thing I care to watch during the winter Olympics. But I have to get myself out of the habit of picking favorites, because mine never seem to get any medals, and I’m starting to feel like I’m cursing them just for wanting them to win.

The other night I watched Johnny Weir skate an achingly beautiful program, and even I could tell he wasn’t at full steam. There was a reason for it – as it turned out he missed the bus to the arena and was almost late for his performance. But what he did give to the audience was just stunning. It wasn’t enough to put him on the platform though.

The other stunning performance I saw came from Japanese skater Takahashi Daisuke, who fell once, but got back into it right away, and was poetry in motion for the rest of it. Between the two of them I just could not take my eyes off the tube, and I hate television anymore. But neither one of them won anything, and I was not greatly impressed by the winners. Oh, I understand why they won…they had all the really difficult manuvers down pat…but in my opinion their moves were not nearly as beautiful. You can dance the dance perfectly, and still not be beautiful. On the other hand you can be so beautiful in your moves that little imperfections in timing and difficulty just go right past. A slight gesture of the hands here, a tilt of the head just so, a lovely arc and motion of the body there… Still photography just doesn’t do figure skating justice, and I’ve seen some first rate photography of the events. You have to see them in motion. Weir is just amazing, I’ve never seen him give a so-so performance, and even when he is off his game like he was last night he is so goddamned beautiful to watch. And Daisuke, never mind the fall he took, just kept my eyes riveted to the tube. But sheer beauty alone does not win medals.

In fact, in men it invites contempt. I was reading a mocking review of Weir’s performance on the web this morning and then noticed that it came from Fox News. Now you just know the bar stool grunts at Fox News only bother with the Figure Skating event to mock the pretty boys, and oogle the teenaged girls in their skimpy costumes. But the homophobia in sports coverage of men’s figure skating is always there, like a background hum. There’s open speculation about Weir’s sexual orientation and I have very little doubt that’s hurting him not just with the sports writers, but also with some people in the Olympic community. Why wasn’t somebody there to make sure he got to the event on time? Why didn’t someone make sure he knew the bus schedules had been suddenly changed? And there’s Fox News the day after, mocking his costume and his ego, as if athletes didn’t have egos, and the homophobic contempt is barely concealed. They did the same thing to Rudi Galindo once upon a time. Weir isn’t talking about his sexuality and it’s hard to blame him. I doubt the sports community bigotry Patricia Nell Warren described in her book The Front Runner has changed very much since she wrote it. You can be openly gay, and you can win the gold, but you can’t do both.