E-mail With Champions

Tonya Harding and her unfortunate crowbar antics were missed in Salt Lake City this year. But for figure skating fans with a leftover thirst for scandal, the Olympics did not disappoint. Matthew L. Butler ’04 was glued to the TV coverage of the controversial gold medal awards in the pairs figure skating competition for the same reasons most fans were: the beauty of the sport, the excitement of high level athletic achievement and, of course, crazy French judges. But Butler also had a bit more at stake in the success of the Russian skaters Yelena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharvlidze because he handpicked their gold medal soundtrack. The pair glided to an Olympic gold medal on Feb. 11 after completing their long program, which was set to “Meditations from Thais” by the French composer Jules Massenet, which Butler selected for the Russian pair.

Eliot House’s annual Evening With Champions benefit makes good things possible for ailing children. It also made good things possible for Butler, a member of the Harvard Figure Skating Club, who was asked to accompany Russian skaters from their training facility in Hackensack, N.J. to Cambridge for the October 2000 performance. Butler jumped at the chance to chat with coach Tamara Moscvina and her current pair Berezhnaya and Sikharvlidze. Moscvina proceeded to talk to Butler for the duration of the three-hour drive to Cambridge, he remembers, telling stories about her previous pairs teams and answering his endless queries about his favorite sport.

After the trip, the two exchanged e-mail addresses and met the next day at Starbucks. Moscvina realized she was dealing with a knowledgeable, die-hard skating fan who had been watching her two star skaters for years, so she asked Butler if he had any ideas for music to which the pair would skate.

Butler was beside himself when Moscvina agreed to use Butler’s choice, which Olympic commentators said suited the Russian pair well. “It is an incredible selection, and it will be remembered forever because they won the gold medal to it,” Butler says.

But slightly more memorable than their performance is the scandal in its wake. Many spectators and officials argued that the performance of Canada’s Jamie Sale and David Pelletier in the long program surpassed that of the Russians. The French judge claimed that the organization that governs French figure skating pressured her to favor the Russians despite an obvious technical error (Sikharvlidze stumbled on the landing of a double axel jump). Canadian Olympic officials promptly requested the international sports tribunal award a gold medal to the Canadian team and on Feb. 15 their request was met. The Canadians received a gold medal though the Russians were also allowed to keep theirs.

Butler disagrees with this decision. “I think that the Russians turned in a more complex program. There were two faults but I think they deserved the gold medal because of the difficulty of the program, Awarding two gold medals sets a bad precedent,” Butler says. “The Russians deserve it outright. I realize this is not the popular position to be taking, but people who know about skating understand why the Russians won. Without a more educated eye, you can’t understand things like edging and speed that the Russians carried.”

Butler is continuing to educate his eyes. He communicates with Moscvina once every one or two weeks and she takes him out to dinner whenever she is in Boston.

Though Butler has been a figure skating fanatic since 1994, he did not even start to learn to skate until last fall. He took lessons through the Harvard Figure Skating Club and practiced every day at 7 a.m. at the Brighton Hockey Center. He is now a teacher with “Learn to Skate,” a volunteer organization that gives Cambridge children instruction time on the ice.

“I learned how to gain speed and turn, but I’m not adept at all. Tamara has never seen me skate, but she said if I was five years younger, she’d be happy to be my coach,” he says. “It’s too late to become a world-class skater, but it’s not to late to enjoy skating for what it is—recreational and enjoyable. I just move around the ice and feel proud of myself for that!”

—M.R. Brewster