NYT: Asians "overrepresented" at U.S. skating rinks.

[Celerity]

32. the article itself is hardly RW

The Asian American Pipeline in Figure Skating

The chain of success stretches back for years and has only strengthened as more have poured into the sport and become Olympic stars.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/08/sports/olympics/figure-skating-chen-asian-americans.html

https://archive.fo/TfDQ0 (non paywalled)

By Andrew Keh

BEIJING — Tiffany Chin scanned the arena at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships last month and marveled at how things had changed. Chin won the national title in 1985. She was a happy-go-lucky teenager back then, but savvy enough to realize that the winners who had come before her had not looked like her, that few people in the rinks where she skated ever did. The scene last month was different. Asian American skaters populated the singles and pairs and ice dancing competitions. They appeared up and down the standings in the senior and junior contests. And by the end of the week, they filled the roster of the Olympic team. For the second consecutive Winter Games, four of the six figure skaters who arrived to represent the United States in the singles events were Asian American: Karen Chen, Nathan Chen, Alysa Liu and Vincent Zhou. A fifth Asian American skater, Madison Chock, is competing in the ice dancing event. “There are so many,” Chin said. “And that is so exciting.”

In the United States, a country where Asians and sports are not often intertwined in the popular imagination, figure skating is now plainly an Asian American sport. Asians make up around 7 percent of the American population but have become vividly overrepresented in ice rinks and competitions at every level, from coast to coast. Gradually, they have transformed a sport that, until the 1990s, was almost uniformly white. They have infused competitions with music that draws from their Asian heritage, bolstered a pipeline that could solidify their hold on the sport and, in a climate of anxiety about anti-Asian violence, navigated the perils of hate on social media while insisting on expressing their roots. “I think representation is really important,” said Nathan Chen, a Chinese American who was also a member of the Olympic team in 2018, when seven of the 14 skaters were Asian American. “So to continue seeing faces that kind of look like yours on TV doing really cool things, I think, is still useful to a young kid.” Amid the various factors behind this phenomenon, almost every Asian American skater mentions being inspired by a chain of early pioneers.

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Tiffany Chin won the singles event at the 1985 U.S. Figure Skating championships. Credit...Bettmann/Getty Images


Michelle Kwan performing her short program at the 1998 Nagano Games. Credit...Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

Asians have long struggled with a lack of representation in American popular culture. For these skaters, then, seeing elements of themselves mirrored in top athletes could be a soul-stirring experience. Mirai Nagasu, a former national champion and two-time Olympian (2010, 2018), grew up working at her parents’ Japanese restaurant, where they eked out enough money to pay for her lessons. Nagasu laughed remembering how much it meant to her, as a young skater, to learn that Kwan’s parents had owned a restaurant, too. (Chin’s parents also owned a Chinese restaurant, and Liu’s father worked in one before she was born.) Naomi Nari Nam, who won a silver medal at the 1999 national championships, noted that the rise of Asian American participation had also coincided with the success of skaters from East Asia, like Yuna Kim of South Korea. “When I started skating, I was the one out of two Asian skaters in my rink, in Costa Mesa, Calif.,” said Nam, whose success led to an appearance on “The Tonight Show” at age 13 and a run of television appearances and commercials in Korea. “I coach now in Lakewood, Calif., and around 90 percent of my clientele is Asian or half Asian.”

Still, the sport was not always accommodating to them. When Chin skated, she was often called “China Doll” by commentators and journalists. Articles from the time refer to her “porcelain complexion” and “Oriental roots.” She was called a “siamese cat” and “unemotional” and an “exotic beauty.” Nam was placed in an etiquette class by her coach so she could learn how to interact with the predominantly white officials and judges who could decide her fate in skating. “He knew that it was a different culture,” Nam said. Skaters said that while explicit racism inside figure skating felt rare, many acknowledged that they received racist comments on social media. Alysa Liu learned over time to tune out harassing messages. But some incidents, in a time when violence and hate against Asian Americans have increased, have been harder to ignore. Liu, who has spoken about her growing awareness of social issues, called her father one recent night, struggling to sleep after reading about the shooting of a 71-year-old Chinese man in Chicago.

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Alysa Liu training in Oakland, Calif. Credit...Jim Wilson/The New York Times


Karen Chen placed fifth in the women’s short program of the team event at the Beijing Games. Credit...Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York Times