Timothy Goebel iced a historic quadruple salchow that helped him vault into third position in the Olympic men’s figure skating short program, but Russian Alexei Yagudin continued his dominating season with a leaping, lilting display that put him in first place.
Yagudin, who said he was so wound up before the competition that his legs felt numb, skated an athletic program with a middle portion that featured precise, rapid-fire step sequences. He wavered slightly on a quadruple toe-triple toe combination but hit a towering triple axel and a smooth triple lutz, then scooped shavings from the ice and flung them outward in a choreographed but still exuberant-looking final flourish.
“My opinion is that you have to be not only a jumper but an artist,” Yagudin said of the gesture, which he also does at the beginning and midway through his routine.
“Physically, I’m really happy with the shape I’m in right now. Mentally, I know it’s going to be harder.”
His battle with fellow Russian Evgeni Plushenko might be off, however. Plushenko fell on his program-opening quadruple toe jump, originally slated to be part of a quad-triple combination, and tumbled to fourth. A triple combination is a required element, and the judges slapped him, giving him technical marks ranging from 5.3 to 5.5. They bestowed far higher artistic scores for Plushenko’s array of spins, steps and thrusts.
Plushenko, the defending world champion, declined to comment after his program. His coach might have expressed his true sentiments. “The Olympic Games is over,” Alexei Mishin said via a Russian translator.
Japan’s Takeshi Honda, skating right after Yagudin, turned in a surprisingly strong performance and is in second place. It remains to be seen whether Honda, whose international results have been improving over the last season, can maintain his momentum in the long program Thursday at the Salt Lake Ice Center.
Americans Michael Weiss and Todd Eldredge are ranked eighth and ninth. Weiss, skating first of the 29 men, two-footed his quadruple toe loop and did a double rather than a triple toe loop in combination.
“I felt good, but unfortunately, the first position is a tough place to skate,” Weiss said.
“Sometimes you feel like playing it safe. I made that decision in the air, to do a double and make sure it was solid.”
The 30-year-old Eldredge, making the curtain call of his career at this Olympics, was undone by his nemesis, the quadruple toe loop. He touched both feet on the landing, stumbled into a double toe combination and then fell on his triple axel, normally his soaring trademark.
“It’s been going so well in practice–I didn’t see any reason not to” try the quad, Eldredge said. “But really, it was the triple axel, and that’s one of my best jumps.
“Obviously, it’s great just being here. It says a lot for an old 30-year-old. The fans were awesome. It took an extra second to calm down a bit.”
Goebel took more than that, first clasping his hands to his corona of blond curls, then to his neck as he grinned ear-to-ear. His face collapsed into tears as he skated toward the boards.
“I was absolutely thrilled,” said Goebel, who spent his early childhood in Rolling Meadows, developed into a world-class skater in Cleveland and now trains in El Segundo, Calif. “I’ve never gotten a crowd response like that before.”
Goebel’s quad salchow, done in combination with a triple toe, was the first ever completed in the Olympics. An aggressive jumper, his chief problem over the years has been what to do between midair exploits.
Goebel’s coach, Frank Carroll, asked reporters how many 5.9 artistic marks Plushenko received and nodded sagely when he was told there were three. “That’s interesting to me,” Carroll said. “What do you get when you stand up–6.0?”
