He has been skating with the elite at the senior level for a dozen years, and it isn’t enough for Todd Eldredge.
At 29, Eldredge was hoping this season could take him back to a future that will include his first Olympic medal. Instead, his first competition of the year took him too far back, to the days well before he had won five U.S. titles and five world medals, including the 1996 world title.
Returning full time to Olympic-style skating Friday night at Skate America, Eldredge fell on two of his jumps in the short program and wound up with no technical score higher than 4.8. He stood fifth of the 11 competitors, too far back to challenge leader Alexei Yagudin of Russia or U.S. teammate Timothy Goebel, who was second.
The last time Eldredge received scores in the fours?
“In juniors,” said his coach, Richard Callaghan.
His last year in juniors was 1988. A decade later, after a disappointing fourth at the Olympics, Eldredge turned his attention to the ersatz competitions of professional skating, but decided within a year he wanted to fill the Olympic medal gap on his career resume.
Men’s skating has changed more technically in the last two years than it had in the previous 10. The successful quadruple jump, a relative rarity before the 1998 Olympics, since has become both common and necessary. Goebel, of Rolling Meadows, twice has landed three quads in a long program and he produced an effortless quad salchow in Friday’s short program.
Quad-triple jump combinations, like the one Yagudin landed to open his short program, no longer make skating headlines, even if this was the first such combination ever in a short program.
The jump revolution left Eldredge at a distinct disadvantage because the only quad he has landed in competition came at a pro-am two weeks ago. His attempt Friday for a quad toe loop jump wound up with him sprawled on the ice. The triple axel that followed produced a similar result. Nothing he did after that could save the program.
“To be honest, I can’t find words to describe this,” Eldredge said. “I’m unbelievably disappointed in how I skated out there, and that’s about it.”
Both Yagudin, who has won three straight world titles, and Goebel felt exactly the opposite.
Worn out by his 1999 season, Yagudin came here last fall with little passion and less energy. That was the beginning of a year-long struggle during which he lost as often as he won.
While winning Skate America here last year in the thin air of 6,000-foot-high Colorado Springs, Yagudin was left gasping. He thought arriving in Colorado 12 days ago to acclimate himself might make a difference, but it didn’t.
“It makes me a little afraid to skate the free [long] program,” Yagudin said.
Yagudin wasted some energy doing so many exaggerated arm movements he looked as if he were swimming the backstroke. Skating to music by Rachmaninoff, he deservedly drew one 5.7, seven 5.8s and six 5.9s on the two sets of marks from the seven judges.
In his first competition under Frank Carroll, Goebel showed signs of a more elegant posture and better skating between his jumps. His presentation scores still were relatively low, from 5.4 to 5.6, for it will take the judges longer to see him in a new light.
