Just as Wayne Gretzky and Tiger Woods are familiar names to even those who disdain hockey and golf, Toller Cranston became well-known among people who don’t know a Lutz from a Salchow. The six-time Canadian figure skating champion went on to a successful career in ice shows and then became a controversial skating commentator for the CBC. Along the way, he earned reputations as a respected artist, an idiosyncratic collector, and a flamboyant character. In his new autobiography, Zero Tollerance – sub-titled An Intimate Memoir by the Man Who Revolutionized Figure Skating – Cranston emerges as the Norma Desmond of sports.

Repeatedly calling himself the Patineur du Siècle (skater of the century), Cranston declares his life’s numerous triumphs in prose filled with unparalleled self-love. It’s true that as a competitive skater, he was not popular with the skating establishment – which, by all accounts, is a petty, political gang of weasels – but in Cranston’s telling, every competitor is unworthy, every judge incompetent, and every bureaucrat corrupt. On the other hand, all his performances are masterpieces, all his costumes are dramatically gorgeous, and all his entrances are brilliant.

In fact, his co-author, Martha Lowder Kimball, catches him out a couple of times. When Cranston claims he won the short program – introduced for the 1972/73 season – all nine times he skated it, the footnote points out that he won it eight of nine times, finishing third at the 1975 Worlds. Later, he returns from an exhibition of his art in New York to find his answering machine filled with 93 messages congratulating him on winning his wrongful dismissal suit against the CBC. But the footnote reads: “The number of messages grows larger with each telling.”

Cranston’s over-the-top self-aggrandizement, combined with the incessant name-dropping, threaten to turn the book into either annoying drivel or hilarious parody. But it never does, and the book remains an oddly compelling read. For one thing, unlike many athletes, Cranston has had a fascinating life away from the rink. His skating took him all over the world, from Sweden to South Africa and from Haiti to Hong Kong, and he took the time to explore more than the hotel and the arena. His art took him to New York and Europe and his celebrity took him to Wichita, Kansas to judge the Miss U.S.A. Pageant. In the process, he hooked up with many intriguing people, including the Happy Hooker, Donald Trump, and Leonard Bernstein.

Cranston is also a far more complex person than many athletes, even if his book does attempt to accentuate the positive. Although he admits to suffering from a cocaine addiction in the early 1990s, for example, he glosses over the gory details. And, with the exception of one brief, but apparently passionate, affair with a married man in Paris, Cranston refuses to open the kimono on his sex life.

Still, Zero Tollerance is a revealing portrait. Eventually, the I-am-the-greatest bravado begins to ring hollow and reveals a Toller Cranston who is a bit sad, a bit lonely, and not nearly as confident as he wants everyone to believe.