Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Vancouver, British Columbia — Evan Lysacek sat with a bemused smile on his face, the gold medal for men’s figure skating draped around his neck, as runner-up Evgeni Plushenko turned the occasion of Lysacek’s victory into a bad lounge act Thursday night.
Talk about disrespectful. Plushenko was late for the medals news conference. He chomped annoyingly on a wad of gum. And when it was his turn to speak, he embarrassed himself, Lysacek and the Olympic Games.
"I was positive that I won," the Russian sniffed. "But I suppose Evan needs the (gold) medal more than I do. Maybe it’s because I already have one."
After a couple follow-up questions, Plushenko asked whether he could be excused. Without bothering to shake Lysacek’s hand or even acknowledging the Olympic champion, he and his entourage exited, stage left.
Good riddance, pal.
Plushenko was and is a marvelous figure skater, a three-time Olympic medalist who has added immensely to Russia’s legacy of greatness in the sport. But Thursday night, he was, for lack of a better word, a doofus.
"I’ve admired him for a lot of years," Lysacek said Friday. "But I’m disappointed that someone who was a role model for me would take a hit at me at the greatest moment of my life."
Plushenko just couldn’t get past the fact Lysacek, also the reigning world champion, did not have a quadruple jump in his program. Plushenko said that without the quad, "it’s not men’s figure skating."
That’s like saying Steve Nash can’t play basketball because he can’t throw down a two-handed reverse dunk, or Ozzie Smith wasn’t a good baseball player because he didn’t hit tape-measure homers.
Plushenko landed a quad in both of his programs. Lysacek did not even attempt one. The Russian mistakenly believed his quads would trump Lysacek’s well-executed triple jumps and his flawless spins, transitions and footwork.
When it was over, Lysacek had 257.67 points, Plushenko 256.36. Little did the judges know, as they were punching in the numbers, that they were about to spark an international incident. Who said the Cold War was over?
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin weighed in with the Russian equivalent of "we wuz robbed!" Plushenko’s coach, Alexei Mishin, called the scoring "criminal" and added, "Any judge who thinks this is the right champion is a Cyclops."
Call me one-eyed, but I don’t see (no pun intended) how the Russians can complain. Lysacek skated the long program of his life. He was strong and secure over his feet, unhurried, at once explosive and graceful. He hit all his triple axels and Salchows. So what that he didn’t land four calling birds, three French hens and a partridge in a pear tree?
Plushenko pulled off the quad toe-loop/triple toe-loop to open his program but was crooked in the air on other jumps and did not connect them with Lysacek’s flair.
But he did the quad! Give that man a gold medal!.
"I don’t know why some people are so hung up on one particular element," Lysacek said.
"If it was a jumping competition, there would be no music or anything. They would give you 10 seconds to do your best jump, and that would be it."
The skater and his coach, Frank Carroll, spent months perfecting the tiniest parts of his program, which was "just about accumulating points from start to finish."
"Anybody arguing with these scores doesn’t really understand the system," the 24-year-old Lysacek added. "This event was really exceptionally judged. I can’t imagine the outcome being any different, no matter what elements were in my program."
Lysacek plans to continue to compete, though he’s not sure he will defend his world title later this year.
As for the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, Russia, Lysacek said, "I don’t think they’d be happy to see me, to be honest."
They were happier, Evan, to see Ronald Reagan
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.