http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/F/ ... TE=DEFAULT
Jan 4, 4:32 PM EST, By NANCY ARMOUR AP National Writer
Lysacek won't compete at US skating championships
Olympic champion Evan Lysacek will still be at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships later this month.
For the first time since 1998, however, it won't be as a competitor.
Lysacek said Tuesday that his role in the "Stars on Ice" 25th anniversary tour will prevent him from competing for the rest of the year. He left Tuesday for the "Stars" shows in Japan, and the U.S. portion of the tour kicks off Feb. 18 in San Jose.
"That's a huge honor to be part of the 25th anniversary tour," Lysacek said. "My parents took me to see it when I was 6 and 7 years old - before I started skating - and I loved it. Once I started skating and saw the show again, it had an inspirational role in my life. ... It's really an honor, and I think is going to fill the void of not competing the rest of the season."
Lysacek, the first U.S. man to win the Olympic title since Brian Boitano in 1988, will still be at nationals to promote "RISE," U.S. Figure Skating's movie on the 1961 plane crash that killed the entire U.S. world team, and the impact it has had on American skating. He'll also skate in the Jan. 30 exhibition.
Nationals begin Jan. 27 in Greensboro, N.C.
"Totally strange," Lysacek said of his role as a spectator. "I have no idea what it's going to be like. (But) I think it's going to be an exciting year."
Lysacek left open the possibility of returning for nationals when he announced he was skipping the Grand Prix series, and is "leaving his options open" about competing in the future. He is still training, doing run-throughs of his Olympic programs and even working on quadruple jumps.
But he couldn't pass up the chance to be part of the anniversary tour for "Stars," which was created by Scott Hamilton, a fellow Olympic champion and one of Lysacek's role models. "Stars on Ice" is now sponsored by Smuckers.
"That was a huge part of my decision," Lysacek said. "It's hard to express this, how he's helped me, but he obviously was a great mentor for me and gave me great advice as I went into the Olympics. That hasn't stopped. He's continued to give me great guidance with my life and where I go from here.
"A lot of opportunities come to everyone, and it's picking and choosing what's right for your own path," Lysacek added. "That's where I've had to learn and be a little smarter this year, because there are more decisions to make."
Lysacek's life has been a whirlwind of activity since he won gold in Vancouver. He was the runner-up on "Dancing with the Stars," and has crisscrossed the globe doing ice shows and promotional appearances. He hosted an event at New York's Fashion Week, and was a judge at the Miss Universe pageant.
He is the official spokesman for "RISE" and will be at the movie's premiere in New York on Feb. 17 - the night before the "Stars" tour opens across the country.
"My life is great," Lysacek said of his hectic schedule. "What was difficult for me, from a psychological standpoint, is there was no preparation for it mentally. I was getting ready for the Olympics and bam! My life changed in a flash. I mean completely changed: my sleep schedule, diet, training, the expectations on me, having to adapt on an hourly basis. I've had to learn as I go instead of preparing in advance.
"I have done just that, and I've learned a lot over the course of the last year. I've learned that I love to skate, I still love to train. If I have the option of getting two extra hours of sleep or training, I'll choose training every time," he said. "That's just a good sign I still really love it.
"I love other stuff, though, too."
Мужчины || Men
Re: Мужчины || Men
by cekoni » 08 Jan 2011, 01:13
Sorry, but I really must to back to this article... 
http://www.universalsports.com/blogs/bl ... 07896.html
By Alexa Ainsworth | Posted: Dec 31, 4:50p ET | Updated: Dec 31, 5:00p ET
'Work like Evan Lysacek works'
How to win Olympic gold
As 2010 comes to a close, I cannot help but look back at what an exciting year it was for the sport of figure skating.
....
While each discipline gave us compelling stories, one of the most gratifying Olympic golds was that won by American Evan Lysacek.
The two-time U.S. champion truly embodied the hard work, commitment, and dedication that comprises the sport of figure skating.
Yes, there is the artistry, the costumes, and the glamour, but for any of that to matter, there must first be the core conditioning and countless hours of effective training.
The sacrifices - hours in the gym, missed social lives, blood, sweat, and tears required to become Olympic champion - are not unique to figure skating. But sometimes natural talent and a little bit of luck can win over true drive and determination. That was not the case for Lysacek.
I have had the good fortune of watching Lysacek compete on the national stage since he was 14 years old. As a tall, lanky teenager, he won the U.S. Novice and Junior titles. He turned heads for his consistency - landing the difficult triples over and over in practice, then delivering under pressure.
This kid was trained - but would his ultimate height (6-2) derail his early mastery of triple jumps? Would he get a triple Axel? What about a quad?
I watched as Lysacek struggled to break through, finishing 12th in his senior debut and landing in the middle of the pack for the next three years.
But in 2005 he won his first senior national medal, a bronze. One year before the Torino Olympic Games and Lysacek was exactly where he needed to be.
He earned a berth on the 2006 Olympic Team, but the consistency that now defines his career failed him in the short program. Even despite a valiant comeback in the free skate, he finished off the podium in fourth.
That may have been the most critical moment in Lysacek's career - being so close to that Olympic podium, but not having the honor of stepping onto it.
"I did everything with that group, except when they went on the ice to get their medals, I stood back and watched and cheered for them," Lysacek said. "There was a moment for me where I thought, I'm going to do everything that I possibly can to get on that podium the next time around because it became so real for me at that point, what it meant and their emotion, their feeling of justification for a life's training and a life's work."
Over the next Olympic cycle, Lysacek's results fluctuated nationally and internationally - but only between first and third. From Torino to Vancouver, he medaled at every event he entered except one (fifth at 2007 Worlds).
Prior to Vancouver, there was no doubt Lysacek was putting in his time at the practice rink - coach Frank Carroll told us he often had to tell his student to stop practicing. In press conferences, training-mate Mirai Nagasu and competitor Patrick Chan both singled out Lysacek's work ethic as the gold standard.
But talk of under-rotated triple Axel's and no quad (due to a foot injury) put his Olympic gold potential in doubt for some. Not for Lysacek.
Years of focus on that one goal would not be spoiled by a poor skate at the Olympic Trials (2010 U.S. Championships) - "I'm saving my Olympic skate for that night," Lysacek said in Spokane.
And so he did. The 2009 world champion became the first U.S. man to claim gold in men's figure skating since Brian Boitano in 1988.
Sure, some fans prefer the fluidity of a Stephane Lambiel or Patrick Chan. Sure, some fans prefer the flair of Lysacek's rival Johnny Weir. But every fan should respect an athlete who truly works harder than anyone else, perseveres, and thus earns the ultimate prize.
As Lysacek skated off Vancouver Olympic ice, 1984 Olympic champion Scott Hamilton said it best, "For all you kids, skaters at home who want to compete at this level, work like Evan Lysacek works."
---------------------------------------------------
Interesting comments about this article here:
http://community.livejournal.com/ontd_s ... 70700.html
....
http://www.universalsports.com/blogs/bl ... 07896.html
By Alexa Ainsworth | Posted: Dec 31, 4:50p ET | Updated: Dec 31, 5:00p ET
'Work like Evan Lysacek works'
How to win Olympic gold
As 2010 comes to a close, I cannot help but look back at what an exciting year it was for the sport of figure skating.
....
While each discipline gave us compelling stories, one of the most gratifying Olympic golds was that won by American Evan Lysacek.
The two-time U.S. champion truly embodied the hard work, commitment, and dedication that comprises the sport of figure skating.
Yes, there is the artistry, the costumes, and the glamour, but for any of that to matter, there must first be the core conditioning and countless hours of effective training.
The sacrifices - hours in the gym, missed social lives, blood, sweat, and tears required to become Olympic champion - are not unique to figure skating. But sometimes natural talent and a little bit of luck can win over true drive and determination. That was not the case for Lysacek.
I have had the good fortune of watching Lysacek compete on the national stage since he was 14 years old. As a tall, lanky teenager, he won the U.S. Novice and Junior titles. He turned heads for his consistency - landing the difficult triples over and over in practice, then delivering under pressure.
This kid was trained - but would his ultimate height (6-2) derail his early mastery of triple jumps? Would he get a triple Axel? What about a quad?
I watched as Lysacek struggled to break through, finishing 12th in his senior debut and landing in the middle of the pack for the next three years.
But in 2005 he won his first senior national medal, a bronze. One year before the Torino Olympic Games and Lysacek was exactly where he needed to be.
He earned a berth on the 2006 Olympic Team, but the consistency that now defines his career failed him in the short program. Even despite a valiant comeback in the free skate, he finished off the podium in fourth.
That may have been the most critical moment in Lysacek's career - being so close to that Olympic podium, but not having the honor of stepping onto it.
"I did everything with that group, except when they went on the ice to get their medals, I stood back and watched and cheered for them," Lysacek said. "There was a moment for me where I thought, I'm going to do everything that I possibly can to get on that podium the next time around because it became so real for me at that point, what it meant and their emotion, their feeling of justification for a life's training and a life's work."
Over the next Olympic cycle, Lysacek's results fluctuated nationally and internationally - but only between first and third. From Torino to Vancouver, he medaled at every event he entered except one (fifth at 2007 Worlds).
Prior to Vancouver, there was no doubt Lysacek was putting in his time at the practice rink - coach Frank Carroll told us he often had to tell his student to stop practicing. In press conferences, training-mate Mirai Nagasu and competitor Patrick Chan both singled out Lysacek's work ethic as the gold standard.
But talk of under-rotated triple Axel's and no quad (due to a foot injury) put his Olympic gold potential in doubt for some. Not for Lysacek.
Years of focus on that one goal would not be spoiled by a poor skate at the Olympic Trials (2010 U.S. Championships) - "I'm saving my Olympic skate for that night," Lysacek said in Spokane.
And so he did. The 2009 world champion became the first U.S. man to claim gold in men's figure skating since Brian Boitano in 1988.
Sure, some fans prefer the fluidity of a Stephane Lambiel or Patrick Chan. Sure, some fans prefer the flair of Lysacek's rival Johnny Weir. But every fan should respect an athlete who truly works harder than anyone else, perseveres, and thus earns the ultimate prize.
As Lysacek skated off Vancouver Olympic ice, 1984 Olympic champion Scott Hamilton said it best, "For all you kids, skaters at home who want to compete at this level, work like Evan Lysacek works."
---------------------------------------------------
Interesting comments about this article here:
http://community.livejournal.com/ontd_s ... 70700.html
warmuse
"But every fan should respect an athlete who truly workers harder than anyone else, perseveres, and thus wins the ultimate prize."
FUCKING BULLSHIT. I KNOW I SAY THIS LIKE A BUTTHURT BITCH EVERY TIME SOMEONE PULLS ~BUT HE WORKED HARDER THAN EVERYONE ELSE~ BULLSHIT BUT I HAVE TO SAY, REALLY? DID HE WORK HARDER THAN DAISUKE, WHO SKATED AT OLYMPICS WITH BOLTS IN HIS KNEES? DID HE WORK HARDER THAN PLUSHENKO WHO CAME BACK FROM 3-YEAR BREAK, AND FUCKED UP HIS ALREADY-FUCKED-UP KNEES DURING PREPARATION FOR 2010 WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP BECAUSE HE OVERWORKED WITH HIS JUMPS AND HAD TO PULL OUT 3 DAYS BEFORE THE COMPETITION?
EVERYONE WORKS THEIR ASS OFF FOR THE OLYMPICS. EVAN'S PR ABOUT MORE HARDWORKING THAN EVERYONE ELSE MAKES ME RAGE SO HARD NOT BECAUSE I HATE EVAN THAT MUCH (LOL I WISH I'M NOT THAT EMOTIONALLY INVESTED IN HIM) BECAUSE OH GUESS WHAT IT IS AN ULTIMATE INSULT TO MY FAVOURITE SKATERS
PEOPLE NEED TO STAN RUSSIAN ATHLETES MORE. THEIR ENTIRE CAREER CONSISTS OF WORKING THEIR ASS OFF BEYOND IMAGINATION OF WIBBLY EVAN STANS AND YOU KNOW, NOT MAKING A HUGE PR DRAMA OUT OF IT ALL THE FUCKING TIME
I AM SORRY I AM NOT SUGGESTING THAT EVAN ISN'T HARD-WORKING I JUST CAN'T STAND THIS BULLSHIT ANYMORE AND CERTAINLY NOT WHEN I FEEL LIKE I'M GOING TO EXPIRE IN ABOUT 10 SECONDS
unimagine
EVAN, PLEASE STAY OUT OF FIGURE SKATING FOREVER SO I NEVER HAVE TO THINK ABOUT YOU AGAIN KTHX
I'm sure we all admire hard work, but it always irks me how the media portrays Evan as the only skater who works really hard. What about, you know, practically everyone else?
(tbh if I had to choose between Evan and PChan I'd go with PChan LOL)
Ehh, as someone who's not particularly well gifted in the 'natural talents' department I can sympathize with someone who works really hard and gets rewarded. But when it comes to figure skating, Evan just doesn't capture my attention at ALL. I'd much rather watch someone with charisma who can really pull me into the performance.
Also, I may be butthurt selfish stan but I just don't like what I've seen of Evan's personality.
I try not to hold anything against Evan as a person, so maybe I was being a little unfair towards him in my comments above, but GDI MEDIA OTHER SKATERS SACRIFICE A LOT FOR THEIR SPORT TOO. Maybe it's because they can't think of anything else to talk about regarding Evan, idk.
sekaigo
DESPITE ALL THE BITTER, BITTER RAGE I HAVE TOWARDS PCHAN'S SCORES/MOUTHING OFF/COMPLETE LACK OF SELF-AWARENESS, I WOULD STILL TAKE PCHAN OVER LYSACEK. BECAUSE AT LEAST I CAN ACTUALLY ENJOY PCHAN'S SKATING WHEN HE STAYS UPRIGHT. (and occasionally he is fucking adorable dammit.)
And IA so hard about the media portrayal. :/ It's like, do they even see the other skaters out there? And when they put Evan up next to Plushy and start going on about Evan's work ethic, I CALL BULLSHIT.
mirror_hands
hmmmm... universalsports article isn't a joke?
"one of the most gratifying Olympic golds was that won by American Evan Lysacek"
No, seriously, If gratifying means cutting-myself-inducing yes, it was very gratifying
Sorry I still can't assume that a skater like Evan has an Olympic Gold Medal. Yeah I know, haters gonna hate...
crossthefingers
"But every fan should respect an athlete who truly workers harder than anyone else, perseveres, and thus wins the ultimate prize."
It sounds like they are either trying to convince themselves... or else begging FS fans to stop hating on Evan.
nastasie
My question is always: but how do they *know* he works harder than anyone else? Have they followed every skater and taken careful notes, gone around with a workhardometer, fed the data into a computer, what?
jumpschool
So basically, every silver and bronze medalist just should've worked harder, then she could've won gold!!! Wow, it's so simple! Wonder why they didn't think of it themselves!! O___o
sawkillriver
ofc they have! IMG produces world renowned, US federation approved WORKHARDOMETERS. there is one installed on every rink in the world.
mussukkainen
Most comments here are not so much about Evan--irrespective of how they feel about his skating or him as a person--but on how his PR machine works, and that is more than fair game, imo. Their claims of him working harder than any other skater, fed to the judges and regurgitated by the U.S. media, played a part in his win, whether you like it or not. More importantly, however, that claim is an insult on all the other skaters who have put their lives on hold in chase of the Olympic dream. Nobody gets to the Olympics without extra hard work, and some hard workers don't even make it there (ask Rybrad).
knigolubka
Because no other Olympic champion didn't work truly hard. Ugh-gh.
This bs freaks me out, have some respect for other athlets, damn it! I understand hard-working is his only prominent feature as a skater, but come on, it's not like other skaters just get their Olympic golds!
whiteshadows_
WHAT. Who wrote this, Evan's manager??
bulldogfaith
I am asking to the author of this article: WHY does Evan's win and work ethic single him out from the other skaters?
...
IS MAO ASADA A LAZY FUCKING BASTARD BECAUSE SHE WAS THE ONLY WOMAN TO DO THREE TRIPLE AXELS IN THE OLYMPICS? IS PLUSHENKO A LAZY FUCKING BASTARD BECAUSE HE'S A THREE TIME OLYMPIC MEDALIST AND A THREE TIME WORLD CHAMPION?
...
According to the author of this article, they all are lazy bastards who did nothing but sit on their asses and play Snake. Evan isn't. Yeah he's not. Yeah, he worked hard to win the Olympics. Will he work hard enough to become a MULTIPLE Oly medalist a la Plushy, Kwan, Slutskaya, and S/Z? Did he work hard enough to become a MULTIPLE World medalist? Did he work hard enough to do three quads in one program like Goebel and Joubert? Oh no. No. THOSE don't matter. What matters is that HE worked hard enough to win ONE OLY GOLD AND ONE WORLD GOLD. Yeah, right? That's hard work. Other accomplishments are complete laziness.
walover165
WELL FUCK YOU TOO EVAN LYSACEK AND YOUR PR MACHINE. DON'T YOU FUCKING TELL ME YOU'RE THE ONLY FUCKING SKATER THAT WORKS HARD. I MAY ONLY HAVE JUST GOT MY SALCHOW BUT I'LL HAVE YOU KNOW I WORK MY FUCKING ARSE OFF EVERYTIME I SET BLADE TO ICE!
ALSO, OBVIOUSLY OTHER SKATERS DO NOT WORK HARD AT ALL. JOHNNY DIDN'T GET HIS ARSE FLOGGED UNDER GALINA. DAISUKE'S BOLTS IN HIS KNEES DID NOT EXIST. PLUSHY'S YEARS OF STARVATION AND LIVING IN SLUMS AND WRECKING HIS KNEES DON'T MATTER, OBVIOUSLY.
TL;DR YOU WERE BORN WITH A FUCKING SILVER SPOON IN YOUR MOUTH. DO NOT EVER EVER EVER TRY TO MAKE OUT THAT YOU HAD TO FIGHT MORE.
I APOLOGISE FOR THE AMOUNT OF PROFANITY IN THIS COMMENT (IN MY DEFENSE I AM AUSTRALIAN AND WE JUST LOST THE ASHES SO THIS IS KIND OF NORMAL)
I DO NOT APOLOGISE FOR THE CAPSLOCK
ALSO LYSACEK'S JUMPS ARE UGLY
I WILL NEVER APOLOGISE FOR CALLING HIM OUT ON THEM BECAUSE ILIA WAS 5'11" AND STILL HAS THE MOST PERFECT JUMP TECHNIQUE
I HAVE A LOT OF FEELINGS RIGHT NOW OKAY
....
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cekoni - Administrator
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Re: Мужчины || Men
by cekoni » 09 Jan 2011, 07:44
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/m ... ts+News%29
Ten out of Canadian figure skating championships
Ankle surgery will prevent former national bronze medalist Jeremy Ten from competing at the Canadian figure skating championships in Victoria, B.C. in two weeks.
Ten, 21, of Vancouver, is considered an up-and-comer in men’s figure skating in Canada, but has suffered pain in an ankle all season. He underwent surgery Jan. 4 to repair what Skate Canada team doctors diagnosed as a bone impingement. On a waitlist, he hadn’t expected surgery to be done until March, but he found out only on Monday about an opening the next day.
The decision to skip the championships was made “to protect my health as well as not to sacrifice next season,” Ten said in an email.
Ten’s competitive highlights were winning a bronze medal at the 2009 Canadian championships, skating with blinding speed and precision, and then creating a standing ovation at the Four Continents Championships in Vancouver the year before the Olympics – in his hometown of Vancouver. He finished seventh but earned 207.27 points, 32.15 points higher than his previous best.
This season, Ten was plagued with pain in his ankle before the Grand Prix circuit, in which he competed at both the NHK Trophy in Japan and at Skate Canada in Kingston, Ont. in consecutive weeks. But it wasn’t certain that he was going to make either: he’d seen many different doctors, underwent many scans and tests and a diagnosis about bone impingement is still unconfirmed. He was given a cortisone shot just before his Grand Prix. “[It] made my ankle a lot worse before getting better,” he said. “But I pushed on and I’m glad I did.”
Ten had a troubled short program in Japan, but redeemed himself in the long with a gritty skate. “I think I got the nerves out at NHK and I just felt more comfortable and at east at Skate Canada,” he said. “I had already accomplished my goals at NHK, which was landing two triple Axels in the long program. That really boosted my confidence.”
At Skate Canada, had some difficulties in the short program again, but delivered a very respectable long program to finish eighth, falling on one of his triple Axels, but landing the other.
In the two weeks after the Grand Prix, Ten said he was skating the best he ever had, but then when he began to push himself further with more repetitions – with the aim of making the team going to the world championships in Tokyo in March – the ankle got worse. “My ankle wasn’t strong enough,” he said. “We tried to ease off, but the damage had been done and it wasn’t getting any better.”
He and coach Joanne McLeod decided to make a deadline of Dec. 31 to see if the ankle improved, but they both knew that it was not. “The pain got so bad, that I couldn’t take it and usually, I have a very high threshold for pain,” Ten said.
Surgeons removed a lot of scar tissue from the ankle and shaved some of the bone down. He will have a follow-up session with the surgeon. “I look forward to getting back onto the ice and hopefully training pain free for the first time in over a year,” he said. “I know in my heart that I made the right decision. It really wasn’t even a decision – the pain had become so unbearable that at the beginning of December, I couldn’t do my [triple] flip, Lutz and loop. Nationals at that point were out of the picture.”
As far as he knows, the surgery was a success, he says. “I may not have made it to the finish line, but I ran one hell of a good race,” he said.
Canada has three spots for men at the world championships this year. The reigning world silver medalist and Grand Prix Final champion Patrick Chan is favoured to take one of them, while Ten’s training mate, Kevin Reynolds is pushing to take another berth.
Ten out of Canadian figure skating championships
Ankle surgery will prevent former national bronze medalist Jeremy Ten from competing at the Canadian figure skating championships in Victoria, B.C. in two weeks.
Ten, 21, of Vancouver, is considered an up-and-comer in men’s figure skating in Canada, but has suffered pain in an ankle all season. He underwent surgery Jan. 4 to repair what Skate Canada team doctors diagnosed as a bone impingement. On a waitlist, he hadn’t expected surgery to be done until March, but he found out only on Monday about an opening the next day.
The decision to skip the championships was made “to protect my health as well as not to sacrifice next season,” Ten said in an email.
Ten’s competitive highlights were winning a bronze medal at the 2009 Canadian championships, skating with blinding speed and precision, and then creating a standing ovation at the Four Continents Championships in Vancouver the year before the Olympics – in his hometown of Vancouver. He finished seventh but earned 207.27 points, 32.15 points higher than his previous best.
This season, Ten was plagued with pain in his ankle before the Grand Prix circuit, in which he competed at both the NHK Trophy in Japan and at Skate Canada in Kingston, Ont. in consecutive weeks. But it wasn’t certain that he was going to make either: he’d seen many different doctors, underwent many scans and tests and a diagnosis about bone impingement is still unconfirmed. He was given a cortisone shot just before his Grand Prix. “[It] made my ankle a lot worse before getting better,” he said. “But I pushed on and I’m glad I did.”
Ten had a troubled short program in Japan, but redeemed himself in the long with a gritty skate. “I think I got the nerves out at NHK and I just felt more comfortable and at east at Skate Canada,” he said. “I had already accomplished my goals at NHK, which was landing two triple Axels in the long program. That really boosted my confidence.”
At Skate Canada, had some difficulties in the short program again, but delivered a very respectable long program to finish eighth, falling on one of his triple Axels, but landing the other.
In the two weeks after the Grand Prix, Ten said he was skating the best he ever had, but then when he began to push himself further with more repetitions – with the aim of making the team going to the world championships in Tokyo in March – the ankle got worse. “My ankle wasn’t strong enough,” he said. “We tried to ease off, but the damage had been done and it wasn’t getting any better.”
He and coach Joanne McLeod decided to make a deadline of Dec. 31 to see if the ankle improved, but they both knew that it was not. “The pain got so bad, that I couldn’t take it and usually, I have a very high threshold for pain,” Ten said.
Surgeons removed a lot of scar tissue from the ankle and shaved some of the bone down. He will have a follow-up session with the surgeon. “I look forward to getting back onto the ice and hopefully training pain free for the first time in over a year,” he said. “I know in my heart that I made the right decision. It really wasn’t even a decision – the pain had become so unbearable that at the beginning of December, I couldn’t do my [triple] flip, Lutz and loop. Nationals at that point were out of the picture.”
As far as he knows, the surgery was a success, he says. “I may not have made it to the finish line, but I ran one hell of a good race,” he said.
Canada has three spots for men at the world championships this year. The reigning world silver medalist and Grand Prix Final champion Patrick Chan is favoured to take one of them, while Ten’s training mate, Kevin Reynolds is pushing to take another berth.
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cekoni - Administrator
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Re: Мужчины || Men
by cekoni » 13 Jan 2011, 06:56
http://www2.macleans.ca/2011/01/12/fire-and-nice/
by Jonathon Gatehouse on Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Patrick Chan’s comeback
He’s perfected the quad, is injury free, and has a new attitude. Next up: world domination
A furious Patrick Chan is hard to imagine. Downcast, maybe. Buffeted enough by a bad performance, or the vagaries of figure skating judging, to temporarily lose that wide grin. But the 20-year-old throwing a foot-stomping tantrum, complete with screams and curses, is a mental image about as difficult to reconcile as a fuzzy bunny with a machine gun. It simply doesn’t compute.
Still, the affable four-time Canadian figure skating champion (once as a junior, and for the past three years running, the senior men’s winner) swears it happened, out of public view, at the Vancouver Games, last Feb. 16. On the biggest stage of his career, in front of a hyped-up home crowd and an expectant nation, Chan had bombed in the short program. He bobbled the landing on his opening triple axel, stumbled during a step sequence—usually his bread-and-butter—and even received a penalty for finishing his routine after the music, a mistake he had never before made in competition. The score of 81.12 was good enough for seventh place, but a death blow to his Olympic medal hopes. So Chan smiled, waved, threw some kisses to the fans and cameras, then slipped behind the curtains and erupted. “My coaches had never seen me so mad,” he says. “I just said to myself, that’s not the way it was supposed to turn out.” Thirteen years of skating, building toward one ultimate dream, only to see it dashed in just under three minutes. You’d drop a couple of f-bombs, too.
Of course, by the time Chan came out to meet the media a few minutes later, the uncharacteristic fit of temper had faded. He was subdued, by his own admission “really lost,” and as is so often the case with Canada’s Olympians, unnecessarily apologetic. Two nights later, he returned to the ice and delivered an impassioned free skate, moving up two spots and finishing the Games in fifth—neither a disaster, nor a victory. Almost a year later, the bitterness is gone, but the disappointment lingers. “It’s like an ‘I didn’t get what I wanted for Christmas’ sort of thing,” Chan explains.
There were lots of reasons why the Toronto skater shouldn’t have been favoured to hit the podium at his first Olympics last winter. He was recovering from a suspected case of H1N1 and a serious tear of his calf muscle, and missed much of the season. Just over a month before the opening ceremonies, he split with his coach of more than two years, American Don Laws. (His choreographer Lori Nichol and spin guru Christy Krall stepped into the breach, and continue to share coaching duties.) He was 19, and facing off against the toughest field he had ever encountered. But that didn’t change his own—or Canadians’—golden expectations.
After a summer of soul searching, and several months of hard work, Chan returned to the ice this fall with an impressive victory at Skate Canada. In late November in Moscow, he came second at the ISU Grand Prix Cup of Russia. Last month in Beijing, he topped the podium at the Grand Prix Final—a tournament of champions—for his first major win in almost two years. On Jan. 22, he will begin the defence of his Canadian championship. But the season’s goal is to peak for the World Championship in Tokyo the last week of March.
Patrick Chan is healthy. He’s got a new attitude. And he’s finally mastered the quadruple jump that is the calling card of figure skating’s most exciting champions. Maybe he should get angry more often.
The first quad came in July, during a summer tune-up competition in Philadelphia, but it doesn’t count. “It was a bit more luck than skill,” says Chan. What seemed like a fluke, however, turned out to be a harbinger.
In the spring, the skater’s movement adviser, Kathy Johnson, a Juilliard dance graduate, had suggested he look to the great Mikhail Baryshnikov for jumping inspiration. Chan found a video of the Russian performing a classic solo from Don Quixote on YouTube. He was impressed with his fluidity, perfect balance, and above all, the strength that allows a premier ballet dancer to soar and spin, even without the glide and speed that aids a figure skater’s takeoff.
During an August practice in Colorado Springs, Co.—Chan’s base since the coaching change last year—with Johnson and Krall, there was a simple suggestion that he stop using his arms so much. The right-hand punch as he was entering the jump seemed a little early and too strong. Holding it back, as it turned out, forced him to use his legs more, and jump higher. “It went up perfect, and I could really feel the lightness of the jump and I just landed it,” says Chan. Years of frustration were banished in a single session as everything suddenly clicked. Soon he was ripping off quads more reliably than his triple axel (a jump that still sometimes bedevils the skater). At the Skate Canada competition in October, he missed the quadruple in his short program, but nailed it in his free skate. That’s the one that counts in his memory. Afterwards, he even joked with reporters about getting a plaque made. It was, he is certain, the start of something big.
Chan had won major competitions before without the jump, relying on his accomplished footwork, spins and high presentation scores. At the Olympics, American Evan Lysacek even won a gold with only triples, and flawless routines that played to the sport’s newish judging system, defeating Russian quad machine Evgeni Plushenko. But there remains a strong belief—among many fans, athletes and coaches—that four complete rotations in the air is what sets the men apart from the boys. (“More feathers, head-flinging and so-called step sequences done at walking speed—that’s what the system wants,” Elvis Stojko, Canada’s three-time World Champion, and a charter member of the quad-squad, fumed in Vancouver. “I’m going to watch hockey, where athletes are allowed to push the envelope. A real sport.”)
Chan, whose fifth-place Olympic finish was also a target of the Stojko broadside—given that he didn’t even attempt a quad—maintains he wasn’t phased by the criticism, but admits being part of the elite club changes one’s perspective. “The quad is so nerve-racking, so high-risk, but there’s a big payoff,” he says. “I can really see both sides of the argument now.”
For a young man who has been figure skating since his mom Karen enrolled him in lessons at Toronto’s Granite Club at age six, looking for a way to keep her eager but skinny boy off the hockey rink, the jumping breakthrough was probably just a matter of time. The bigger leap may end up being the mental one that promises to allow him to nail it consistently under pressure in front of the judges. At the Grand Prix event in Moscow in November, Chan won silver, but lost gold. Sitting in first place after the short, where he delivered a flawless quad toe, the Toronto skater buckled during his long program, falling to the ice on his opening quad, on a triple axel, and yet again on his usually reliable triple Lutz. Even after the Zamboni impression, he ended up only 3.1 points behind Tomas Verner of the Czech Republic. The long flight back home was spent kicking himself in the butt. “It really bothered me,” he says. “The week before Russia, I did four clean long programs in a row in practice. I just couldn’t grasp why I wasn’t doing it in competition.”
Chan has never been much of a believer in the head games that are now such a huge part of Olympic sport. The only words of advice and motivation he has sought throughout his career have come from his father Lewis, a Toronto lawyer, usually delivered during a quiet pre-competition walk. When Krall suggested it might be time to call in some outside help, Chan had just one name on his wish list—Brian Boitano. The U.S. skater never successfully landed a quad in competition, but he did win when it counted most, besting Canada’s Brian Orser for the gold at both the 1988 Olympics and the World Championship. The two ended up talking the day before Chan left for the Grand Prix Final in China—a single phone conversation that quickly put everything in perspective.
“As a young athlete I did so well that I didn’t even have to think about anything. Just go out and have fun,” says Chan. But as he got older, and the competition got better, the Canadian champion sometimes found himself grasping for what used to come naturally, searching for his elusive “groove.” Boitano offered a new definition of focus, advising Chan to concentrate on “being conscious through the whole program.” Think about the footwork, breathing, the jump sequence, it doesn’t really matter—the key is to always stay in the moment, choosing hyper-consciousness over unconsciousness. For Chan, that nugget—and some other advice he prefers to keep to himself—provided the same type of epiphany as the counsel to put less arm into his quad. “I had to find another way to force my technique, force my mind to do it properly, even through the times where I didn’t feel well,” he says. The plan is for him and Boitano to keep chatting on a regular basis in the buildup to the Worlds. “I still don’t believe in a shrink,” says Chan. “They haven’t been in our situation, on the ice standing in front of thousands of people. They don’t understand.”
For many fans, last season’s winter sports ended with Vancouver’s closing ceremony. The athletes, however, toiled on for months, even if few noticed. In Turin, at the World Championships that March, Chan won silver behind Daisuke Takahashi, the Olympic bronze medallist. (Lysacek and Plushenko both gave the event a pass.) The skate wasn’t great, but it was good enough, and it provided Chan with US$27,000 in prize money, some of which he spent on a flashy new Brodie mountain bike.
In his oh-so-short off-season, he travelled to Singapore with his mom, visiting relatives, and then on to Thailand. The three-week trip was the longest break from skating he had taken since he still had his baby teeth. He thought briefly about quitting the sport. Chan misses school, and having a normal life. He’s preparing to take his SATs, and would eventually like to study business at a U.S. university like Stanford or the University of Pennsylvania. Back in Colorado, he played some golf—another passion. And he biked a lot.
In early September, a few days before the opening of Skate Canada’s national training camp in Mississauga, Ont., he went off a trail and landed on some rocks. The pain was so bad that he initially though he might have broken his back, but it was just severely bruised. He took two days off, then returned to the ice and promptly nailed a quad.
Motivation was never in short supply for Chan, but now it seems to flow from somewhere deeper. “I think he’s a bit more focused,” his father Lewis says in a lawyer’s measured way. “His general approach is more disciplined. It’s probably a combo of more maturity and drive.”
The skater says a training program that has been tweaked since his calf injury to provide him with more rest and recovery time is paying dividends. He feels stronger, invigorated. This June, he and his mother are organizing a camp in Calgary with his coaches and support team, to share their recent breakthroughs in technique and off-ice workouts.
Looking back, the Olympic year already seems like a dream. The media buildup, McDonald’s commercials, people cheering him in the streets, now all pleasant memories. What’s not so fondly recalled is how he let it get the better of him. How the hype began to colour his own thoughts, and the medal glory became more of a fixation than the difficult process of getting there.
Surely that’s why he bats away questions about Sochi in 2014. He’ll only be 23, but that’s three World championships away. Ask him what he learned from Vancouver and there’s a pause. “How to overcome disappointment,” he says finally. Patrick Chan is committed to looking forward. The view from the top of the podium is always better.
by Jonathon Gatehouse on Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Patrick Chan’s comeback
He’s perfected the quad, is injury free, and has a new attitude. Next up: world domination
A furious Patrick Chan is hard to imagine. Downcast, maybe. Buffeted enough by a bad performance, or the vagaries of figure skating judging, to temporarily lose that wide grin. But the 20-year-old throwing a foot-stomping tantrum, complete with screams and curses, is a mental image about as difficult to reconcile as a fuzzy bunny with a machine gun. It simply doesn’t compute.
Still, the affable four-time Canadian figure skating champion (once as a junior, and for the past three years running, the senior men’s winner) swears it happened, out of public view, at the Vancouver Games, last Feb. 16. On the biggest stage of his career, in front of a hyped-up home crowd and an expectant nation, Chan had bombed in the short program. He bobbled the landing on his opening triple axel, stumbled during a step sequence—usually his bread-and-butter—and even received a penalty for finishing his routine after the music, a mistake he had never before made in competition. The score of 81.12 was good enough for seventh place, but a death blow to his Olympic medal hopes. So Chan smiled, waved, threw some kisses to the fans and cameras, then slipped behind the curtains and erupted. “My coaches had never seen me so mad,” he says. “I just said to myself, that’s not the way it was supposed to turn out.” Thirteen years of skating, building toward one ultimate dream, only to see it dashed in just under three minutes. You’d drop a couple of f-bombs, too.
Of course, by the time Chan came out to meet the media a few minutes later, the uncharacteristic fit of temper had faded. He was subdued, by his own admission “really lost,” and as is so often the case with Canada’s Olympians, unnecessarily apologetic. Two nights later, he returned to the ice and delivered an impassioned free skate, moving up two spots and finishing the Games in fifth—neither a disaster, nor a victory. Almost a year later, the bitterness is gone, but the disappointment lingers. “It’s like an ‘I didn’t get what I wanted for Christmas’ sort of thing,” Chan explains.
There were lots of reasons why the Toronto skater shouldn’t have been favoured to hit the podium at his first Olympics last winter. He was recovering from a suspected case of H1N1 and a serious tear of his calf muscle, and missed much of the season. Just over a month before the opening ceremonies, he split with his coach of more than two years, American Don Laws. (His choreographer Lori Nichol and spin guru Christy Krall stepped into the breach, and continue to share coaching duties.) He was 19, and facing off against the toughest field he had ever encountered. But that didn’t change his own—or Canadians’—golden expectations.
After a summer of soul searching, and several months of hard work, Chan returned to the ice this fall with an impressive victory at Skate Canada. In late November in Moscow, he came second at the ISU Grand Prix Cup of Russia. Last month in Beijing, he topped the podium at the Grand Prix Final—a tournament of champions—for his first major win in almost two years. On Jan. 22, he will begin the defence of his Canadian championship. But the season’s goal is to peak for the World Championship in Tokyo the last week of March.
Patrick Chan is healthy. He’s got a new attitude. And he’s finally mastered the quadruple jump that is the calling card of figure skating’s most exciting champions. Maybe he should get angry more often.
The first quad came in July, during a summer tune-up competition in Philadelphia, but it doesn’t count. “It was a bit more luck than skill,” says Chan. What seemed like a fluke, however, turned out to be a harbinger.
In the spring, the skater’s movement adviser, Kathy Johnson, a Juilliard dance graduate, had suggested he look to the great Mikhail Baryshnikov for jumping inspiration. Chan found a video of the Russian performing a classic solo from Don Quixote on YouTube. He was impressed with his fluidity, perfect balance, and above all, the strength that allows a premier ballet dancer to soar and spin, even without the glide and speed that aids a figure skater’s takeoff.
During an August practice in Colorado Springs, Co.—Chan’s base since the coaching change last year—with Johnson and Krall, there was a simple suggestion that he stop using his arms so much. The right-hand punch as he was entering the jump seemed a little early and too strong. Holding it back, as it turned out, forced him to use his legs more, and jump higher. “It went up perfect, and I could really feel the lightness of the jump and I just landed it,” says Chan. Years of frustration were banished in a single session as everything suddenly clicked. Soon he was ripping off quads more reliably than his triple axel (a jump that still sometimes bedevils the skater). At the Skate Canada competition in October, he missed the quadruple in his short program, but nailed it in his free skate. That’s the one that counts in his memory. Afterwards, he even joked with reporters about getting a plaque made. It was, he is certain, the start of something big.
Chan had won major competitions before without the jump, relying on his accomplished footwork, spins and high presentation scores. At the Olympics, American Evan Lysacek even won a gold with only triples, and flawless routines that played to the sport’s newish judging system, defeating Russian quad machine Evgeni Plushenko. But there remains a strong belief—among many fans, athletes and coaches—that four complete rotations in the air is what sets the men apart from the boys. (“More feathers, head-flinging and so-called step sequences done at walking speed—that’s what the system wants,” Elvis Stojko, Canada’s three-time World Champion, and a charter member of the quad-squad, fumed in Vancouver. “I’m going to watch hockey, where athletes are allowed to push the envelope. A real sport.”)
Chan, whose fifth-place Olympic finish was also a target of the Stojko broadside—given that he didn’t even attempt a quad—maintains he wasn’t phased by the criticism, but admits being part of the elite club changes one’s perspective. “The quad is so nerve-racking, so high-risk, but there’s a big payoff,” he says. “I can really see both sides of the argument now.”
For a young man who has been figure skating since his mom Karen enrolled him in lessons at Toronto’s Granite Club at age six, looking for a way to keep her eager but skinny boy off the hockey rink, the jumping breakthrough was probably just a matter of time. The bigger leap may end up being the mental one that promises to allow him to nail it consistently under pressure in front of the judges. At the Grand Prix event in Moscow in November, Chan won silver, but lost gold. Sitting in first place after the short, where he delivered a flawless quad toe, the Toronto skater buckled during his long program, falling to the ice on his opening quad, on a triple axel, and yet again on his usually reliable triple Lutz. Even after the Zamboni impression, he ended up only 3.1 points behind Tomas Verner of the Czech Republic. The long flight back home was spent kicking himself in the butt. “It really bothered me,” he says. “The week before Russia, I did four clean long programs in a row in practice. I just couldn’t grasp why I wasn’t doing it in competition.”
Chan has never been much of a believer in the head games that are now such a huge part of Olympic sport. The only words of advice and motivation he has sought throughout his career have come from his father Lewis, a Toronto lawyer, usually delivered during a quiet pre-competition walk. When Krall suggested it might be time to call in some outside help, Chan had just one name on his wish list—Brian Boitano. The U.S. skater never successfully landed a quad in competition, but he did win when it counted most, besting Canada’s Brian Orser for the gold at both the 1988 Olympics and the World Championship. The two ended up talking the day before Chan left for the Grand Prix Final in China—a single phone conversation that quickly put everything in perspective.
“As a young athlete I did so well that I didn’t even have to think about anything. Just go out and have fun,” says Chan. But as he got older, and the competition got better, the Canadian champion sometimes found himself grasping for what used to come naturally, searching for his elusive “groove.” Boitano offered a new definition of focus, advising Chan to concentrate on “being conscious through the whole program.” Think about the footwork, breathing, the jump sequence, it doesn’t really matter—the key is to always stay in the moment, choosing hyper-consciousness over unconsciousness. For Chan, that nugget—and some other advice he prefers to keep to himself—provided the same type of epiphany as the counsel to put less arm into his quad. “I had to find another way to force my technique, force my mind to do it properly, even through the times where I didn’t feel well,” he says. The plan is for him and Boitano to keep chatting on a regular basis in the buildup to the Worlds. “I still don’t believe in a shrink,” says Chan. “They haven’t been in our situation, on the ice standing in front of thousands of people. They don’t understand.”
For many fans, last season’s winter sports ended with Vancouver’s closing ceremony. The athletes, however, toiled on for months, even if few noticed. In Turin, at the World Championships that March, Chan won silver behind Daisuke Takahashi, the Olympic bronze medallist. (Lysacek and Plushenko both gave the event a pass.) The skate wasn’t great, but it was good enough, and it provided Chan with US$27,000 in prize money, some of which he spent on a flashy new Brodie mountain bike.
In his oh-so-short off-season, he travelled to Singapore with his mom, visiting relatives, and then on to Thailand. The three-week trip was the longest break from skating he had taken since he still had his baby teeth. He thought briefly about quitting the sport. Chan misses school, and having a normal life. He’s preparing to take his SATs, and would eventually like to study business at a U.S. university like Stanford or the University of Pennsylvania. Back in Colorado, he played some golf—another passion. And he biked a lot.
In early September, a few days before the opening of Skate Canada’s national training camp in Mississauga, Ont., he went off a trail and landed on some rocks. The pain was so bad that he initially though he might have broken his back, but it was just severely bruised. He took two days off, then returned to the ice and promptly nailed a quad.
Motivation was never in short supply for Chan, but now it seems to flow from somewhere deeper. “I think he’s a bit more focused,” his father Lewis says in a lawyer’s measured way. “His general approach is more disciplined. It’s probably a combo of more maturity and drive.”
The skater says a training program that has been tweaked since his calf injury to provide him with more rest and recovery time is paying dividends. He feels stronger, invigorated. This June, he and his mother are organizing a camp in Calgary with his coaches and support team, to share their recent breakthroughs in technique and off-ice workouts.
Looking back, the Olympic year already seems like a dream. The media buildup, McDonald’s commercials, people cheering him in the streets, now all pleasant memories. What’s not so fondly recalled is how he let it get the better of him. How the hype began to colour his own thoughts, and the medal glory became more of a fixation than the difficult process of getting there.
Surely that’s why he bats away questions about Sochi in 2014. He’ll only be 23, but that’s three World championships away. Ask him what he learned from Vancouver and there’s a pause. “How to overcome disappointment,” he says finally. Patrick Chan is committed to looking forward. The view from the top of the podium is always better.
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cekoni - Administrator
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Re: Мужчины || Men
by Дарина » 14 Jan 2011, 01:25
clairdelalune wrote:I'm gonna puke!!!
So am I
After a summer of soul searching, and several months of hard work, Chan returned to the ice this fall with an impressive victory at Skate Canada.
М. Плисецкая: "Пожалуй, Плющенко похож на Годунова. Тоже высокий, статный, эффектный, уверен в себе. Да и эти длинные развевающиеся на ветру и в пируэтах белые волосы. Такой же тип. И темперамент у него есть, и артистизм."
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Дарина - Posts: 4308
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Re: Мужчины || Men
by alysonshade » 14 Jan 2011, 14:00
clairdelalune wrote:I think I'm gonna puke!!!
Why, claire?... You don't like him anymore?...
- alysonshade
Re: Мужчины || Men
by clairdelalune » 14 Jan 2011, 14:13
alysonshade wrote:clairdelalune wrote:I think I'm gonna puke!!!
Why, claire?... You don't like him anymore?...
I don´t like this kind of articles. I know Chan has a great chance to win every WC untill 2013 and Sochi Olympics too, but it´s stupid to consider it already done.
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clairdelalune - Posts: 877
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Евгений Плющенко©
