know him from adam

Sunday, January 12, 2003 - Skatemaster Scott Hamilton has a gold medal to wear around his neck, a new bride to put around his arm, a new loft around LoDo, and a Stars on Ice Tour that will travel around to 61 cities, including Denver's Pepsi Center on Jan. 22. During a recent interview, Hamilton spent 30 minutes with us melting the ice.

Adam Schefter: Best part of owning a loft in downtown Denver?

Scott Hamilton: The food. When I lived in the suburbs, you had to plan on where you were going to go. When you live downtown, you just walk outside and make a decision. But I haven't gotten used to it. I've only been there a few nights. Once I really get skilled, that's going to be a blast.

AS: Biggest difference between living in Denver and Los Angeles.

SH: Well I would say the traffic, but T-REX took care of that.

AS: What made you come back for Stars on Ice?

SH: It's honestly family. And they asked if I would come back and help them through not only the injury problems of Tara Lipinski and Steven Cousins, but also to try to bring some of the traditional initial values to the new cast, to meld the old and the new.

AS: Where did you get the idea to start Stars on Ice 17 years ago?

SH: Usually any good idea comes out of necessity, and I was unemployed. I was with Ice Capades for two years, they were going through a sale, and the new guys didn't want me. They were stuck in that world of "Only women sell tickets." And, have you seen Ice Capades lately?

AS: I have not, no.

SH: No? Because they're out of business. So we started this. We started very small and very slow, and we built over the years a pretty amazing success story.

AS: How has it lasted 17 years?

SH: The commitment and the quality of the skaters involved. You look at the skaters that have come through this tour. We signed the best skaters out of the last Olympics, and that's been huge. Kurt Browning, who is phenomenal. The two best male skaters in the world as far as entertainers are Todd Eldredge and Alexei Yagudin, and we got both. We still have Katarina Witt, who is a legend. I can't tell you how many times I've played a round of golf and the first thing that's asked of me by my foursome is, 'Is she as sexy as I think she is?'

AS: Well, is she?

SH: She is the ultimate skating diva. She's awesome. She's funny, beautiful and very sexy.

AS: Is she single?

SH: She's actually dating the head of production of the tour. She's known him forever, and it's just funny how they've always flirted but now they're kind of officially going out.

AS: Your favorite athlete?

SH: Well, I'm a huge hockey fan, so nothing makes me happier than watching Joe Sakic and Peter Forsberg.

AS: Did you think Bob Hartley got shafted?

SH: No. I couldn't understand why they weren't scoring goals or why they weren't scoring at home. I thought, "You have to put that on the coach."

SH: What did you think of Dana Carvey's impersonation of you on "Saturday Night Live"?

AS: I thought it was a lot better than David Spade's.

SH: Did it bother you?

AS: Gosh, when "Saturday Night Live" parodies you? Wow. How often does that happen to anybody? That made our Olympics. When we were in Albertville and we heard that "Saturday Night Live" parodied Verne (Lundquist) and I. Our chests came out and we said, "We're all that now because we've been on 'Saturday Night Live.' "

SH: If you could take a crowbar to anyone's knee in sports, who would it be?

AS: Ooh. I would never want to take anybody out of sports, although, who would I throw the remote control through my television set at? Shaquille O'Neal. I just want him to make eye contact with one person interviewing him. He looks so uninterested in that part of his career. I mean, he's obviously one of the most significant players in our history, but I just think if he were 50 pounds lighter and half a foot shorter, he wouldn't be significant.

SH: Your favorite sports commentator?

AS: Probably John Madden. And I like Gary Thorne. Whenever I hear that voice, I just think, Stanley Cup. And I like Don Cherry, too, because he's the only guy in the world that dresses worse than Deion Sanders.

AS: Your favorite skater?

SH: I like aspects of so many different skaters that it's hard for me to say. I think Janet Lynn was the best lady skater I've ever seen. And I think the best male skater in the history of the sport was Dick Button. He's known more as a commentator than a skater. But look at the old movies of his skating. He was 20 years ahead of his time.

AS: Most scared you've been in your life?

SH: The day I found out I had cancer. I remember the math that goes through your head. Oh, I have cancer, that means A equals B equals C equals D. I just progressed forward to pain and anguish that I thought I was going to go through. Then that fear quickly turned into determination.

AS: What do you tell others about beating cancer?

SH: Your cancer experience is exactly what you make it. If you approach it with a positive determined outlook, where you savor and appreciate and celebrate every day, that will be your cancer experience. It's a hard thing to go through. But it's funny, because the further away from it I get, the more I realize how it profoundly influenced everything in my life in a positive way. There was one little girl I met in Chicago at a Survivor's Celebration. She had lost her leg. And she stood up in front of this crowd and said: "The worst thing that ever happened to me was cancer. The best thing that ever happened to me was cancer." And I just found that to be amazingly inspirational. In many respects, I feel that way.

AS: What made you start chemocare.com?

SH: Chemocare.com is phenomenal. You should log on to it just to check it out. My mother had chemotherapy, and when I was diagnosed with cancer, I didn't know what it was. So it was in my house, but I had no idea. I thought you're put into a room and they're going to replace all your bodily fluids with huge machines. And it's an IV bag. It's a drip. It's medicine. It's chemical therapy. And I didn't understand it for that. Chemocare.com describes every form of chemotherapy in lay English. The Oncology Nursing Society did a survey of 500 chemotherapy patients. Thirty-two percent feared death when they were diagnosed with cancer and had to go through chemotherapy. Forty percent feared chemotherapy. So there are a lot of people out there that have heard so many horror stories about chemotherapy that they'd rather die than go through it. And what I'm trying to do with chemocare.com is to humanize it and demystify it so people can understand what it is and they're not going to worry more about the treatment than the disease.

AS: What sticks out in your mind from your wedding last month?