Nicole Bobek's face was splashed across newspapers and TV screens from London to Los Angeles, the figure skater's latest doings making her tabloid fodder once again.
It hardly mattered the former U.S. champion hadn't competed in a decade, or that she was a relative bit player in the Michelle Kwan era. Fifteen years after Tonya Harding and the Whack Heard 'Round the World, her arrest last week was a reminder that ice princesses can find trouble just as easily as any other athlete.
"Figure skating, especially for women, is so much about femininity," said Karen Sternheimer, a sociologist at the University of Southern California. "You're judged on grace and beauty. You wear a dress in competition, and makeup. When they commit crimes or challenge our expectations, they also challenge our expectations of hyper-femininity."
Bobek has been accused of being a "significant player" in a New Jersey drug ring. The 31-year-old was charged with conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine, and faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted. She is free on bail.
Deep down, of course, fans know skaters aren't perfect. Figure skating, after all, is a sport that can make The Young and the Restless look prim with its cattiness, breakups and whining about judges.
"Our sport is a very revealing sport as to who you are," said Peggy Fleming, the 1968 Olympic champion. "You are judged on the music you select, the costume you wear, how you wear your hair, how you speak at interviews, the choreography that you do, whether you're slim or fat. All these things come into play.
"To be able to handle all those situations, there's not too many other sports that judge you quite so under the microscope."
For the most part, skaters live up to those expectations.
That, though, makes the exceptions all the more glaring.
Harding was a cigarette-smoking, tough-talking girl from the wrong side of the tracks, figure skating's bad girl long before then-husband Jeff Gillooly helped plan an assault on rival Nancy Kerrigan.
Bobek had a wild streak to match her talent. She liked to have fun, wasn't much for practice, had a run-in with the law as a teenager and got the nickname "Brass Knuckles" for all the rings she wore.
Three years after winning gold at the Lillehammer Games, Oksana Baiul was charged with drunken driving and reckless driving after a high-speed crash. Christopher Bowman, the 1989 and '92 U.S. men's champion, died last year of a drug overdose and an enlarged heart.
"This doesn't make people think, 'Wow, all figure skaters end up being drug dealers.' Because that's not a realistic portrayal," said Michal Ann Strahilevitz, an associate professor of marketing at Golden Gate University. "What I think it does is make you realize nobody's exempt from major pressure and possibly really bad deeds and bad people," she said. "No sport is exempt from it."
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