Figure Skating's Greatest Stars »

Steve Milton is a sportswriter who has covered six Winter Olympics and more than a dozen World Figure Skating Championships. He is the author of nine figure skating books, including Figure Skating Now.

A beautifully illustrated celebration of the best athletes from this widly popular sport.

VOYA

Milton's book divides sixty-three biographical essays among five chapters. The biographical chapters are interspersed with those of topical note. "Figures and 6.0," covers the end of skating's compulsory figures and the demise of the 6.0 scoring system; "Nationalism and the Building of Champions" addresses the sometimes uncomfortable marriage of figure skating—like so many sports—to the political realm; and "Pivotal Moments" addresses topics such as the introduction of women and the influence of television. Milton dominates the genre and has published more than ten biographies on figure skating since 1994. No other author even comes close. Printed on slick, heavy paper, this oversized title seems to suffer from psychosis: it plays at the fringes of information for research wrapped in a coffee table ornament. Milton touches on hot-button issues such as inequitable scoring, the Harding-Kerrigan debacle, and Dorothy Hamill's depression, but without much depth. The index, which includes only names, makes the book's objective clear: its focus, as says the title, is the sport's stars. Fair enough. Here it succeeds, and interested fans will find considerable and highly readable information in a friendly format. Older fans and researchers will no doubt have tougher questions, however. Nowhere does Milton speak to drugs—do they tempt competitors? What did Rudy Galindo's brave coming-out do for the sport? Do parallels of the unremitting stress of the tennis circuit exist in figure skating? With his considerable expertise, Milton almost certainly has something to say about these topics. Let's hope his next book does. Reviewer: Lauri J. Vaughan

Table of Contents

Greatest Stars and Leading Legends

The Men

Figures and 6.0

The Women

Nationalism and the Building of Champions

The Pairs

Pivotal Moments

The Dancers

Legends in the Making

Acknowledgments

Further Reading

Credits

Index