Hot Skater

Saw this letter to Bill Simmons and thought I needed to check it out:

Q: Two words -- Tanith Belbin. The hottest athlete I've seen, maybe EVER ... She was SO HOT that I sat there on Thursday Jan.12, and watched an entire three minutes of ice dancing, simply because of Tanith Belbin. She was so hot that I lost all sense of judgement. I was actually saying that the ice-dancing choreography was really good and "Wow, look at her skates!!" I realized afterward that it was similar to the "South Park" episode about Bebe's Boobs. If you've never seen it, this fourth-grade girl starts to get boobs, and all the boys are possessed, thinking all sorts of nonsense like, "Bebe is really smart" and "I wish I could be more like Bebe" ... Then they all start fighting over her like cavemen/monkeys ... All because of her boobs. The moral of all this -- I got sucked in by some hot girl on TV, who I will never even see in person ... She made me watch ice dancing!!! She made me make my friends watch the same performance later that night ... And guess what! They loved her! Even ridiculously hot women on television, who really aren't even physically within 2 feet of you, can make you do things you normally would never think of doing. God bless 'em ... or damn them all to hell. Either way, she's still hot and I will look forward to the ice-dancing championships at this year's Olympics.
-- Blaise, San Diego

SG: See, this is the stuff you don't get in Sports Illustrated's Winter Olympics preview.

So my verdict is, yes, she's very good looking. But obviously this reader has really turned up the hyperbole, like Simmons himself.
Belbin is a Canadian who recently became an American citizen when an appropriations bill assisting aliens of "extraordinary ability" was signed by President Bush on Dec. 30. She was able to compete as an American in international competitions, but in the Olympics you can only compete for the country of which you are a citizen.