Former champ rips gold medallist
Made Elvis so sick he almost left building
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 20/02/2010 (6012 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
VANCOUVER — Evgeni or Evan? Jumps versus artistry. To quad or not to quad.
Another chapter was added to the long-running quadruple jump debate after American Evan Lysacek won Olympic gold on Thursday night, edging Russian Evgeni Plushenko for top spot.
At issue: the four-revolution jump. Plushenko landed it but had to settle for silver even though Lysacek didn’t try a quad.
The results got tongues wagging around Vancouver and sparked a fresh wave of Internet chatter on a subject that has been front and centre in the men’s event for years. One particularly biting column came from three-time world champion Elvis Stojko, who didn’t mince words with his thoughts on the judges’ scoring.
“Sorry, Evan Lysacek. You’re a great skater and all. But that wasn’t Olympic champion material,” Stojko wrote on the Yahoo! Sports website.
Under a headline entitled ‘The Night They Killed Figure Skating’ Stojko also said the International Skating Union has “taken the risk out of figure skating and it makes me sick.”
When asked about the comments at a news conference Friday, fellow Canadian Patrick Chan said he was “really shocked.” The 19-year-old from Toronto, who finished fifth a night earlier at the Pacific Coliseum, said Lysacek deserved the gold.
“Elvis… might be frustrated because his generation was about jumping and the focus was on the quad of course, and that was the excitement in those days,” Chan said.
“But I think the excitement has kind of veered off thanks to the new (scoring) system. It’s kind of split between the skating and the jumps.”
When the Code of Points was introduced in 2004, high-flyers were forced to show off more than just jumping skills. Artistry, footwork, transition skills and interpretation are just as important.
“More feathers, head-flinging and so-called step sequences done at walking speed — that’s what the system wants,” Stojko wrote in his column. “I am going to watch hockey, where athletes are allowed to push the envelope. A real sport.”
— The Canadian Press
