VANCOUVER — The snake head twirled in the air as fast as Evan Lysacek’s as he skated into history. As he finished his closing combination spin, the snake on his costume seemed as excited as Lysacek.
By the time the two came to a halt, Lysacek and a worldwide audience knew the defending world champion had put the defending Olympic champion in the biggest pressure cooker of his life.
Evgeni Plushenko, the latest of a long line of Russian skating gods, didn’t break. However, he cracked just enough Thursday night to let Lysacek slip in for the gold medal, ending a string of six straight Olympic golds for Russian or Soviet men.
The battle wasn’t so much a revision of a Cold War on ice but of quad vs. no quad. Lysacek, 25, suffered a relapse of his sore left ankle and dropped the quad from his program. Plushenko kept his while thumbing his nose at all those who didn’t.
From a philosophical standpoint, the quad was squashed.
Lysacek, whose two snakes on his shirt represented good vs. evil in his music, Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Scheherazade,” was nearly flawless. His most difficult element, an opening triple lutz-triple toe loop, scored 11.40 points and then he piled up points like a pinball machine. He landed eight triples and three combinations, and his spins were nearly all level fours, the highest. His 167.37 was a world record, giving him a total of 257.67.
“If it was a jumping competition, they’d give you 10 seconds to run and do your best jump,” said Lysacek said. “But it’s a 4-minute, 40-second program and about sustaining that level of skating, excitement and endurance from start to finish. That’s kind of what I’ve been working on every day.
“This medal I can’t comment on because I was totally unprepared for it. But my performance I was very well-prepared for.”
Lysacek, skating first in the final group of six, then had a long wait. He had little to worry about until Plushenko. Japan’s Daisuke Takahashi, third after Tuesday’s short, only .05 behind Lysacek, fell on his opening quad and just hung on for a bronze.
Plushenko skated last and skated clean. He landed his opening quad and seven triples. But he wobbled on a triple axel, looked tentative on some jumps and his spins weren’t nearly as fast as Lysacek’s — he had a negative grade of execution on one.
Needing 166.88 to beat Lysacek, he scored 165.51 for a total of 256.51.
“I was sure I had won my second Olympic Games, but this is the new system,” Plushenko said. “The quad is not valued anymore.”
Besides breaking the Russian stranglehold on the sport, Lysacek became the first world champion to win Olympic gold the next year since American Scott Hamilton in 1984.
Plushenko smiled on the podium but he was clearly not happy. He’ll be even less happy when he learns the scoresheet showed Lysacek received a warning on a combination, meaning judges gave him the benefit of the doubt before giving him credit.
In the press conference afterward, with Lysacek sitting next to him, Plushenko was asked what he thought when his program ended.
“I was positive I won,” said Plushenko, who also won silver in 2002. “I supposed Evan needed a medal more than I do. Maybe it was because I already have one. But I have to say two silvers and one gold is not too bad.”
