The Women's Figure Skating event is just about the only thing I watch when it comes to the Winter Olympics.
While it's debatable whether anything that is subject to individual judging and not to objective measurement can really be called a sport, I love the blending of athletic effort and poetic grace that the best practitioners have always exhibited.

With no German competitors in the finals, it's easy for me to say that I don't usually root for the "home team", but I honestly subscribe to the motto that the best should win. But i understand that Americans were rooting for Sasha Cohen, who had done so brilliantly in the short program and who, it was hoped, would continue the tradition set by greats such as Dorothy Hamill, Kristi Yamaguchi (my personal favorite), and Michelle Kwan.

Watching the competition last night was tough. I tend to suffer with the athletes as they stumble or fall. What's worse in this particular sport is that after a fall, you have to grit your teeth, smile through it all and continue with the program. But if, like Sasha Cohen did, you take falls in the first 30 seconds of your program, that has to have a psychologically devastating effect, although she did recover.

I also felt for Russian Irina Slutskaja. At 27, this probably was her last chance for olympic gold. And while I don't have the professional eye, it was difficult for me to see why her program should have set her back behind Sasha Cohen in the end.

Shizuka Arakawa glided effortlessly and beautifully, with just the right amount of technical difficulty not to distract from the lyrical beauty of her performance. As her turn cam fairly late in the competition, it did not really take awesome predictive powers to say she would take home the gold, but that's what I did after seeing her skate.

Congratulations to her and to Japan, for the first ever olympic gold in women's figure skating!