VANCOUVER — “Sorry.”
That’s all Jeremy Abbott could say when he skated off the Olympic ice Tuesday night. It went to his family sitting in the stands. They had traveled from Colorado Springs to see their Aspen-raised son, the two-time defending American champion, chase an Olympic medal.
Instead, they saw their son melt down in front of a worldwide audience. Abbott had two major mistakes on jumps and finished the short program with only 69.40 points.
He had taken heat for finishing 11th in his last two world championships. He will take that while sitting in 15th at the Olympics, hopelessly out of medal contention.
Afterward, Abbott stood up to the questions, though he had more words than answers.
“Never in my wildest dreams did I think that that would happen,” he said.
He will use Thursday’s long program as mere preparation for next month’s world championships in Turin, Italy. He needs a telescope to see first-place Evgeni Plushenko, the defending Olympic champion who turned away skeptics with a nearly flawless program for 90.85 points.
Evan Lysacek, runner-up to Abbott at nationals, is second at 90.30, and Japan’s Daisuke Takahashi is third at 90.25.
Abbott didn’t fall, but his mistakes were just as costly. He nailed his most difficult element, an opening triple flip-triple toe, then he did a single axel instead of a triple and a double lutz instead of a triple.
After scoring 10.90 on the first element, his next two combined for a total of 1.2. The North Korean skater scored that much just skating to center ice without falling.
“I’ve been so consistent this season in practice,” Abbott said. “I’ve been improving with each competition. I didn’t feel extra nerves. I didn’t feel extra pressure. I didn’t feel anything because of this specific competition. I hit the opening combination and I felt good. I don’t know where it went wrong, but something went wrong.
“The next two jumping passes just disintegrated.”
After finishing 11th at worlds, Abbott changed coaches and left Colorado Springs for suburban Detroit, where he started to blossom. He came to the Vancouver Games as a solid medal contender.
“Clearly,” said his coach, Yuka Sato, “he wasn’t comfortable out there.”
Meanwhile, Plushenko looked as if he hadn’t left the ice since Turin when, in actuality, the Russian star came out of a 3 1/2-year retirement six months ago. Except for a slight wobble on his triple-axel landing, he nailed every element, including his opening quad.
“I am in history already because I am back,” Plushenko told a massive pack of reporters. “I didn’t skate 3 1/2 years. I won Europeans. I won nationals. I won Grand Prix. I not bad skater today.”
However, Plushenko’s transition score of 6.8 was lower than his 8.0 at Europeans. His comment that he doesn’t do transitions launched a major attack by American judge Joe Inman, producing worries of an anti-European bias by skating officials across the pond.
“It’s a result of the information war against him,” Plushenko’s famed coach, Alexei Mishin, said of his transition score.
Lysacek, who was 10th after the short program in Turin, didn’t do a quad but skated a clean program and cried, grabbing his head in his hands when he finished.
While Lysacek battles Plushenko in an old-fashioned American-Russian skating shootout, Abbott will seek answers.
“I’m going to have to do a lot of digging in the next two days because I’m not going to give up,” Abbott said. “I’m not going to leave it here. I’m not going to leave my Games on that experience. But right now I just want to go home and sleep for a week.”
John Henderson: 303-954-1299 or jhenderson@denverpost.com
Plushenko leads the pack
Olympic figure skating writer John Henderson handicaps the men’s field for Thursday’s long program:
1. Evgeni Plushenko, Russia, 90.85. Plushenko, right, has Olympic gold, silver and a quad but also a frustrated nation on his shoulders.
2. Evan Lysacek, U.S., 90.32. Can he repeat a remarkable long program from Turin in 2006 that lifted him to fourth?
3. Daisuke Takahashi, Japan, 90.25. Lysacek warned the world about him. He won worlds two years ago.
4. Nobunari Oda, Japan, 84.85. This one-time star is on the comeback trail but appears to be too far out.
5. Stephane Lambiel, Switzerland, 84.63. Unlike Lysacek, he has a quad but would settle for a second silver medal.
