Tuesday, February 21, 2006

"...I've learned you can be beautiful without being perfect."


Ex-Rising Star Makes a Healthy Return to the Ice, from The New York Times, February 18, 2006

TURIN, Italy, Feb. 17 — As her figure skates grew rusty inside the trunk of her Volkswagen, Jamie Silverstein stood in front of a room of sorority women at Cornell University, took a deep breath and told them why she had quit the sport of ice dancing.

"Hi, my name is Jamie," she remembers saying in a shaking voice that day in 2002. "I was on track to go to the Olympics, but my body gave out because I have an eating disorder."

Silverstein was a college freshman then, light years from her life as a skater.

At one time, she and her partner, Justin Pekarek, were touted as the United States' best ice dancers in decades. They were Fred and Ginger on skates, seamlessly gliding across the ice as they waltzed, cha-cha-ed and rumba-ed their way to success, winning the gold medal at the 1999 world junior championships.

A year and a half later, Silverstein crumbled, unable to cope with her eating disorder, anorexia. She blamed her sport, in which women wear skintight outfits that show every flaw and the pressure to live up to expectations can be suffocating.

For four years, Silverstein's skates were left untouched.

So it was a near miracle, Silverstein said, when she and her new partner, Ryan O'Meara, skated onto the ice at the Palavela on Friday for the compulsory portion of the ice dance competition. With her raven-colored hair pulled back from her face and her pink dress flowing as she moved, Silverstein smiled as she danced the waltz. But this time, after years of emotional distress, her smile was genuine.

"This has been overwhelming," Silverstein, 22, said afterward, tearing up. "I think a lot of people didn't believe that I could do this, so this is a huge victory for me."

She and O'Meara, also 22, were in 18th place, with the original dance still to come Sunday and the free skate Monday. They are the No. 3 pair on the United States team and are not considered contenders for a medal, but they say that just being in the competition is enough of a reward.

Tanith Belbin and Ben Agosto, the world silver medalists last year, were sixth, 1.42 points behind the first-place couple, Barbara Fusar Poli and Maurizio Margaglio of Italy. The other United States dancers, Melissa Gregory and Denis Petuhkov, were 15th.

When Silverstein and Pekarek left the sport, Belbin and Agosto took their place as the United States' best hope for its first Olympic ice dance medal in 30 years.

"We really looked up to Jamie and Justin, because they paved the way for us as the up-and-coming U.S. team," Agosto said. "It's an unbelievable accomplishment for Jamie to come back."

Silverstein, from Pittsburgh, had paired with Pekarek when she was 11. Several years later, the weight began to peel off her 5-foot-3 frame. Her face became more angular. Her shoulder blades looked bony. Her weight loss was hard to hide in her costumes.

She pretended to be fine, but on the inside, Silverstein said, she was drowning. She said she felt the need to be the best, to make people happy, including her mother, Robin, who had gone through a divorce and had focused her energies on her daughter's career.

It was not unfolding as the romantic life Silverstein had imagined from watching made-for-TV movies. She said she felt invisible.

"I thought someone would say, 'She's more important than any of this skating stuff,' and would rescue me," Silverstein said. "I just wanted someone to pluck me away and, for a long time, that was so sad."

She handled that pain by restricting her food intake. Pekarek and their coach, Igor Shpilband, would try to feed her. Pekarek took her to a sports psychologist, but even that did not help.

"Everyone in the skating world knew she had a problem, but they didn't know the severity of it, or the ties to the depression or mental anguish," said Pekarek, now a skating coach and college student in Massachusetts. "She was lost because everyone had planned her future for her and she had no control over it."

One day in 2001, Silverstein just could not do it anymore. Sobbing, she told Shpilband and Pekarek that she no longer had the strength to train and that she was not just a skater, she was a person, too. She needed time away from the sport.

"Igor, bless his heart, said, 'No, you are a skater. You are beautiful,' meaning it to be empowering, like I had a gift," she said. "Then Justin stood up for me and said, 'Don't worry, you can take as much time as you want.' I'll always love him for being the first person to stick up for me."

She and Pekarek, while on top of their ice-dancing world, parted ways.

At Cornell, Silverstein still battled anorexia and bulimia. After seeing a counselor and a nutritionist, she said, she soon realized that skating did not cause her problem. She learned ways to take care of herself.

Then, in late 2004, she dragged those rusty skates out of her trunk. She called Shpilband and asked to come back. Then she asked Pekarek to join her, but he declined because he was skating with someone else. She and O'Meara teamed up in April.

"She's an amazing person and I'm so glad I could help her make it here," said O'Meara, who is from Houston.

But for Silverstein, who studies art therapy at Cornell, it still is difficult, particularly when she sees other ice dancers.

"It just takes having the courage to be as I am in this environment and not get caught up in comparisons," she said Friday, as a paper-thin skater walked by wearing an outfit that looked like two strategically placed dinner napkins.

Then Silverstein sighed.

"It was really hard for me for a long time, and it still is," she said. "On a day-to-day basis, I don't feel beautiful, but skating has always made me feel beautiful.

"It's just that now I've learned you can be beautiful without being perfect."

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