By Sandra Loosemore
CBS SportsLine Figure Skating Writer
Jan. 1, 1999

Almost a year has passed since Michelle Kwan and Tara Lipinski competed at the Olympic Games in Nagano, but you'd never know it from the way some of their fans have been behaving.

Having long since exhausted any rational topics concerning Kwan's or Lipinski's actual skating, some obsessed fans have gone off the deep end in expressing resentment and directing pure hatred at their favorite skater's rival.

The media frenzy that followed Tonya Harding's involvement in the assault on Nancy Kerrigan (top) helped boost figure skating's audience. (Allsport)

The Internet has become the forum of choice for spreading this kind of nastiness. One can find "hate pages" on the World Wide Web directed at both of these skaters, e-mail lists devoted to hate mail, and even a "Tara/Michelle Fight Board," where partisans are encouraged to duke it out in print.

The vitriol frequently spills over into the normally more rational and unbiased skating discussion forums on the Internet, where such "bashing" of skaters is not at all appreciated.

Criticism based on skating-related issues -- flawed technique, a bad performance, programs that don't quite work, or even poor career or business decisions -- is one thing. But much of the current venom is either completely mindless ("Tara sucks!") or directed at a skaters' character instead of her skating ("Michelle is stuck up and snotty!").

RIVALRIES BETWEEN SKATERS AND THEIR respective partisans are nothing new, of course. In the early 1970s, the biggest rivalry was between Janet Lynn of the United States and Canada's Karen Magnussen. Ten years later, tabloid newspapers trumped up the putative rivalry between American skaters Elaine Zayak and Rosalyn Sumners to a ridiculous level.

And then there was the whole Tonya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan affair in 1994. Considering how the press treated that story, you almost expected these two skaters to stage a fistfight at Lillehammer to determine the championship instead of actually skating.

With Harding out of the picture after the Olympics, the press then turned to building up a supposed rivalry between Kerrigan and Oksana Baiul -- and fans of both skaters played their part. If Kerrigan so much as frowned on-camera, her detractors would use it as an excuse to launch into vicious assaults on her character. Similarly, Baiul received her own share of "bashing" as a result of her personal and professional problems in the years since Lillehammer.

But it's hard to imagine what Kwan and Lipinski have done to deserve these attacks by so-called "skating fans." Both young women are undeniably talented and both have achieved a great deal in the sport of figure skating through a combination of hard work, family support, and being in the right place at the right time. And based on all published reports, there has never been any personal enmity between the two skaters.

Perhaps each skater has received more hype from the media than she has actually deserved on the basis of her skating alone. But is that any reason for fans to attack the skaters themselves rather than venting their ire at the press?

KWAN AND LIPINSKI ARE NOT ALONE in being part of an escalating fan war. A subset of Brian Boitano fans have been engaged in this kind of warfare for so long and on such a scale that they have collectively become known on the Internet as the "Boitano Borg." This group's prime target was initially Boitano's 1988 Olympic rival, Brian Orser, but they have since directed their attacks at Kurt Browning, who has beaten Boitano in a number of professional competitions.

When Boitano was winning such competitions regularly, he confirmed his supremacy over all of his competitors in his fans' eyes. But when Boitano began to lose to Browning, his fans began to argue that the pro competitions had lost all legitimacy, and those aspects of Browning's skating that the judges found superior to Boitano's were constantly derided.

When Browning decided to compete in the new International Skating Union Open competitions that Boitano chose to avoid, Boitano's fans began to attack Browning -- and only Browning, among all of the pro skaters in these events -- as a traitor to all of professional skating.

Such personal hatred of skaters by supposed figure skating "fans" is frightening. How long will it be before some deranged person crosses the line and does physical, as well as verbal, violence to their favorite skater's rival?

We already have a classic example of this in tennis, where an obsessed Steffi Graf fan stabbed Monica Seles. And we are now seeing incidents in which figure skaters, and in one case even the parent of a skater, have been stalked or threatened by such fans.

It is hard enough for well-known, elite-level skaters to deal with crowds of autograph-seekers and well-wishers wherever they go and suffer the loss of privacy that comes with being a skating champion. But nowadays these skaters must also worry that a crazy person might intend to do them physical harm.

ANOTHER DISTURBING TREND IS THE INTERNECINE feuds among fans of the same skater that have broken out, with different factions angling to see who can get the most recognition from the skater in question, or from the public.

Russia's Ilia Kulik, for example, seems to have three or four competing fan clubs, some of whose members attend his public appearances carrying large banners that are primarily advertisements for their own group rather than shows of support for Kulik. Do these clubs exist to promote Kulik or themselves?

Meanwhile, fans of several other skaters seem to compete among themselves to see who can construct the most elaborate website or who can publish the most insider information and gain other signs of favor from the skater in question.

It has to make skaters feel very uncomfortable to be at the center of all this. A skater's job is to skate, not to fulfill the fantasies of his or her admirers.

In the "old days," the Internet helped to bring the community of figure skating fans closer together by providing a place where they could share their knowledge and love of skating. But times have changed, and so much of online figure-skating discussion is merely about spreading ill will and malice.

Surely, fans can find ways to express appreciation and support without having to denigrate or defame all of their favorite skater's rivals. Surely, it is possible for fans to cheer on their favorite skaters without drawing more attention to themselves.

Being a "figure skating fan" means loving the sport as much as any one particular skater, and unbridled online hatred only hurts the sport itself by creating the perception that what happens on the ice will always be overshadowed by the current off-ice soap opera.