Olympic gold medalist Evan Lysacek phones on a Wednesday night from Texas where he’s just stepped out of the rink after performing with the Smucker’s Stars on Ice tour.
And you’re thinking: Wait a sec – wasn’t he just in Los Angeles yesterday for the results show on “Dancing With The Stars”?
“It’s been so much fun, so exciting,” Lysacek explains of his crazy schedule this spring, competing on ABC’s hit show two days a week and performing skate routines around the country with the tour the rest of the time. “I’m running on adrenalin, for sure – it’s the only way to get by.”
See photos of Lysacek skating and dancing
Lysacek danced twice Monday on “Dancing With The Stars” and on Tuesday learned that he’d made the finale next week. He’ll have an easier time preparing for it now as the skate tour comes to Staples Center in Los Angeles on Thursday and Honda Center in Anaheim on Friday.
Still, this is crazy, right? So we wanted to know how – after all the hard work of the Vancouver Olympics, where he won his gold medal – Lysacek agreed to attempt this.
It started the first week of 2010, Lysacek says, when the producers of “Dancing With The Stars” approached him and asked if he’d be interested in coming on the show.
“I was really focused on our Olympic trials and training,” he says. “But I thought it would be fun because I knew what a good time my friends Apolo Anton Ohno and Kristi Yamaguchi (both Olympic skaters, both ‘Dancing’ champions) had on the show.”
He’d already committed to do the Smucker’s tour, though, and wasn’t sure he would be able to do both. Then one of his sponsors, Flexjet, offered to let him use a private jet to skip back and forth across the country, and the folks at “Dancing” agreed to work with him to make his schedule as flexible as possible.
“They kind of said if you think you can do it we’ll figure out a way,” Lysacek says. “I knew it would be grueling, but I didn’t realize how much I’d enjoy it, and how much balance it would give me in my life.”
Each week, professional dance partner Anna Trebunskaya travels with Lysacek to wherever he’s performing with the ice tour, teaching him the choreography for the waltzes, foxtrots and cha-cha-chas they’ll be performing on the show.
“I’m just taking one day at a time,” he says. “Trying to switch focuses throughout the day so that when I ‘m dancing, I’m concentrating on that – it takes so much concentration to learn the steps – and then when I come to the arena, I’m kind of more at home and I just enjoy it.”
Though to viewers, it might seem the fluid movements on the ice would easily translate to the dance floor, Lysacek says that’s just not so. For one thing, he’s a single’s skater, not use to working with and relying on a partner.
For another, skating is much more about the athletics of the moves, he says.
“I think people see similarities because there is music involved in skating, and we have some arm movements and steps in there to connect (skating moves),” Lysacek says. “With skating, though, it’s all about the tricks, the elements that are required in our routines.
“As far as learning dance steps and choreography, it’s all new to me. There’s nothing that helps me on the dance floor that I’m taking from the ice.”
Even as a newcomer to ballroom, the camaraderie of the cast – both celebrities and pros – has made for a wonderful experience, Lysacek says.
“It’s truly been like stepping into a family,” he says. “It’s a mix of people that ordinarily, I don’t know if we’d cross paths in everyday life. But we bonded and we meshed and now we’re very, very close.”
Contact the writer: 714-796-7787 or plarsen@ocregister.com
