Demands of career changing skater

If you've never seen former Springfield resident and Olympian John Zimmerman skate with long-time partner Kyoko Ina, today is the day.

If you want to see him live, Fairborn is the place to be at 4 p.m. For $34-$57 per person, you can watch Zimmerman and Ina, and many of the other figure skaters who competed in last February's Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah, grace the Nutter Center ice when the "Stars on Ice" tour makes a stop.

If you are short on cash, you can catch him on the tube today during the "Hallmark Celebrates Valentine's Day" show on CBS beginning at noon.

What you will see, even if you have seen him perform before, is a different John Zimmerman. A more-relaxed John Zimmerman, if that is possible for this carefree southern-born boy. A more serious John Zimmerman, who has in the last year entered into a new phase of his skating career, which began at late-night sessions at Hobart Arena in Troy, and a new phase of life.

"It's keeping me busy, but I'm making a living out of it right now and that's good," said Zimmerman by phone Wednesday. "I get to see people around the country and visit a lot of friends. There's a lot more (friends) coming out of the woodwork than I thought I knew."

Ah, the intoxicating catchings of fame. The media exposure, the big bucks as a pro, the endorsements, the glamour. And the travel, the home-sickness, and the separation from the ones you love.

"It's kind of demanding," Zimmerman admitted. "There's plenty of traveling going on, that's for sure. I've never traveled this much before.

"You are on the road so much, it's hard to do things that require your time at home. Sylvia's at home studying hard and we are buying a condominium. So a lot is going on."

Then he paused for a second and added with a laugh: "Maybe it's best to be on the road and get away from it."

"Sylvia" is world-class Italian figure skater and long-time girlfriend Sylvia Fontana. For seven years, they've kept their love fires burning - despite the flock of female fans that continues to hound this good-looking 29-year-old, despite the separation that conflicting big-time skating schedules inevitably cause.

"That's the hardest thing about the tour," said Zimmerman, about the separation, not the women. "She (Fontana) comes at various times here and there. But we haven't gotten to see very much of each other. That part of it is bad."

Zimmerman is taking steps to change that. The two are banking that seven is their lucky number as they got engaged Nov. 9 of last year.

"She said yes, that's the big news," said Zimmerman with a playful laugh. "There's been a lot of separation in the seven years, but we've stayed together.

"She moved to New Jersey with me in July, so it has been a lot better. I figure she's a keeper."

The date is set for August 28 of this year in romantic Rome in Fontana's native country of Italy.

"We've been there together four times and we love it there," said Zimmerman. "We're going to get married in a beautiful medieval church, which dates back to the early 900s."

A storybook wedding for the boy from St. Raphael Elementary School who has had a storybook life, one that took him from his birthplace in Birmingham, Alabama, to three straight U.S. pairs championships, to a bronze medal at the 2002 World Figure Skating Championships, to a fifth-place finish at the tarnished 2002 Winter Olympic Games. He has also been a Capezio model, a Bank of America endorser and the subject of a glitzy March 2002 Rolling Stone magazine interview.

So will his status as a sex symbol suffer when he finally ties the knot and become unavailable?

"I don't know if that is what it is or not," said a somewhat-embarrassed Zimmerman of his sex-symbol status. "I don't think it was that big to begin with. But we're moving on to another stage in our life. Everything is working out at the right time."

Finally, after a year of unfortunate timing, some good timing. As you might recall, Zimmerman and Ina found themselves in the middle of yet another ugly figure skating controversy at this time last year at the Winter Games. Still yet to be fully-resolved, a judge was caught and admitted, then denied, then half-admitted slanting scores toward two Soviet competitors, the result of which was gold medals for the Soviets and a Canadian pair.

Then there was the controversy last summer centered around Ina testing positive for a banned substance and subsequently being banned from amateur competition for two years. As you might imagine, the carefree Zimmerman took it all in stride.

"Our main mission is to do the tour and skate well," he said. "That is not part of what we are focused on right now."

The reason is simple.

"The last three or four years have been pretty stressful," he said. "This last year has been my most stressful ever. I'm glad I'm through it. Now I can do some fun skating.

"We are all pretty satisfied with how it turned out considering where we started from."

But Zimmerman just can't get past what happened to him and Ina at the Olympics. Part of the reason, he admits, is how it was and still is being handled.

"It depends on how the organizations handle the situation," said Zimmerman when asked point blank if the controversy has done irreparable damage to the sport he loves. "They can end up having a black eye if they don't take the right action on it to fix it.

"I don't think the immediate action they took with the judges anonymous is the way to go," he continued. "But they say they are going back to the drawing board and revamping things again. They say they are going to be getting a lot more people's input. I think they could take a lot more of the skaters' input."

But that appears unlikely. And the damage, regrettably, is done.

"Three or four people can really do some damage to a sport," said Zimmerman, showing his dead-serious side while maintaining his trademark honesty. "You work so hard to get to the Olympic Games and then you get a couple of idiots going in there that are very self-serving and messing everything up for the athletes.

"I think everyone in that competition had a negative fallout," he continued. "The entire competition was compromised because of it. The other skaters didn't get a fair and honest competition."

If that was the only problem, the issue might be resolved positively by now, says Zimmerman.

"I felt the USA (organizers) didn't stand behind their athletes. I felt they were sweeping it under the rug, in a sense, just to let the Games go on. When you look back in retrospect, it could have been handled a lot better. I don't think the athletes were put in front of everything else.

"There's no fair recourse taking place. There should have been an investigation at the very beginning."

But there wasn't. And that is hard for someone with the simple moral upbringing of Zimmerman's to understand.

"I'm pretty carefree, but it amazes me the ethical decisions people make; they're trying to benefit out of it at the sake of athletes," he said. "It is about sport, competition. I think they should have been thrown out of the sport from the very beginning."

The whole thing has caused Zimmerman to do some soul-searching.

"Why would you go into a sport if you think you can't win it?" he wondered out loud. I then turned the question around to Zimmerman.

He thought for a minute, then said, "It goes back to doing your best performance and feeling good about it. That's really all you can do. You chose to do skating early on. So I guess this is a part of it."

The subjective judging and all.

"But you can still have subjective judging if you can be honest," said Zimmerman, still obviously struggling with dealing with a dishonest situation. "I've talked to a lot of people and written a couple letters about it. It does effect the ethical conduct of the way the athletes are handled."

But he's not going to let it effect his life from here on out. And especially not his homecoming (well, sort of), today.

"I've been anticipating coming back and seeing a lot of my family, setting them up with tickets and all," he said of today's Nutter Center appearance. "I wish I had a lot more time to spend with them."

"Family" includes uncle Charles Zimmerman, an attorney in Springfield from a long line of Clark County attorneys, and aunt Kari Winters, perhaps his two biggest fans in Springfield. And then there are all those cousins.

What's a fellow to do? For John, it is to enjoy and to prepare for a much different future.