A quarter-inch-wide blade is having much larger ramifications for U.S. figure skating champion Evan Lysacek and his compatriots.
Problems with the blade, which broke last week, led to an injury that forced Lysacek’s withdrawal Thursday from the world figure skating championships, which begin Tuesday in Gothenburg, Sweden.
Without Lysacek, a two-time world bronze medalist, the U.S. men are in danger of getting only two places at the 2009 world championships in Los Angeles.
Lysacek, of Naperville, will be replaced by Jeremy Abbott, 22, fourth at the 2008 nationals.
That means the U.S. men’s team will have two skaters, Abbott and Stephen Carriere, making their senior world meet debuts. Its leader, three-time U.S. champion Johnny Weir, was eighth at the ’07 worlds.
The finishes of the top two men must add up to 13 points or fewer for the United States to have three men’s entrants at the 2009 worlds. That seems unlikely.
“I have my fingers crossed,” Lysacek said via telephone, just after an MRI scan that he said showed a sprained rotator cuff and sprained ligaments in his left shoulder and arm. He expected to have a cast on the upper arm and a brace to support it for at least a week.
The injury occurred at practice Wednesday in Los Angeles, where Lysacek was trying to get comfortable on the third set of blades he had tried since the old one broke. The setting and fit of the blade are critical in figure skating, especially on jumps and spins.
Lysacek said he was landing a triple axel jump when his right blade snapped from its weld. He fell hard to the left, hitting the ice with his shoulder, elbow and forearm.
“I had been slipping on easier things, so I was taking it slowly, but I realized if I wanted to get to worlds, I had to settle on one set of blades and try everything.” Lysacek said.
It is not only the U.S. men whose future prospects are compromised.
Because the 1-2-4 women at the nationals are too young for senior worlds, the U.S. team in Gothenburg has two senior world debutantes and slumping 2006 world champion Kimmie Meissner, who tumbled to seventh at nationals.
That trio also seems unlikely to earn three places for next year.
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phersh@tribune.com
