Scott Hamilton happy to be skating again
Scott Hamilton’s voice, though muffled by a bad cellphone connection, was unmistakably joyful.
“I’m back to being an ice skater. How weird is that?” he said the other day. “Isn’t that bizarre? I never thought I’d be doing this again.”
Hamilton, the 1984 Olympic figure skating gold medalist, returned to performing last weekend for the first time in 5½ years, skating in Cleveland for the benefit of the Scott CARES initiative at the Cleveland Clinic Taussig Cancer Center.
The show, which also featured figure skating gold medalists Kristi Yamaguchi, Ekaterina Gordeeva and Ilia Kulik, among others, raised more than $1 million for the initiative, which provides advice and resources to cancer patients and their families.
It was Hamilton’s first performance for a crowd since he was treated for a benign brain tumor in 2004. It was far from perfect, but simply being back on the ice with friends who were as close as family was enough to make it a different kind of gold-medal effort.
“It was fun. It put me back in touch with what I loved about skating,” he said. “When I stopped skating 5½ years ago I didn’t want to skate anymore. I’d gotten to a place where I wasn’t happy on the ice, and now being back out there I am happy about skating again. I was able to kind of release whatever feelings I had before that put me into retirement, whether it was chemistry or brain chemistry from having the brain tumor.
“That’s one thing I really wanted to know. Did I stop skating back then because it was really time, or was it body chemistry or brain chemistry that was stopping me from enjoying and skating at a level I could feel good about? And just being with my friends again in that capacity and skating again made me feel like what happened 5½ years ago taking away skating wasn’t something in my control. It was an issue with my health.
“And I’m hoping I can just keep working towards being the best skater I can be and performing more and more often and getting better with each performance.”
Having his sons, 6-year-old Aidan and 22-month-old Maxx, there to see him added to his joy.