VANCOUVER — Time and again, Evan Lysacek was grilled about Evgeni Plushenko slamming his performance and quibbling about the quad, how even government leaders in Russia are crying foul over the finish in the men’s skating final.
Time and again, Lysacek sidestepped the bickering. Nothing the American said would be better than the answer hanging around his neck.
“All I know is he’s been really positive to me and been a really consistent skater through the years, and I’ve tried to learn from that,” Lysacek said Friday morning, still basking in the glow of his Olympic gold medal. “I guess I’m a little disappointed someone who I saw as my role model would take a hit at me in one of the most special moments of my life.”
Plushenko, the defending Olympic gold medalist and a three-time world champion, was the only one of the two to land the all-important quad, the four-revolution jump that’s been a must-have for every Olympic men’s champion since Ilia Kulik in 1998.
“If the Olympic champion doesn’t know how to jump the quad, I don’t know,” Plushenko sniffed afterward. “Now it’s not men’s figure skating, it’s dancing. That’s my point.”
Lysacek took it all in stride.
“It’s tough to lose. It’s a really tough pill to swallow,” Lysacek said. “We’ll just try not to take it out of context and give him the benefit of the doubt.”
Brits break long drought
WHISTLER — Amy Williams finished off a surprising run to the women’s skeleton gold medal, giving Britain its first individual Winter Olympics title since figure skater Robin Cousins prevailed at Lake Placid in 1980.
Williams finished four runs in 3 minutes, 35.64 seconds. Germans took silver and bronze, with Kerstin Szymkowiak seconds and Anja Huber third.
In the men’s event, Canada’s Jon Montgomery edged Latvia’s Martins Dukurs for the gold. Russia’s Alexander Tretyakov was third.
Alfredsson leads Swedish attack
VANCOUVER — Daniel Alfredsson scored twice and defending gold medalist Sweden avoided a monumental upset against outmanned Belarus, winning 4-2.
• Jaromir Jagr, a 38-year-old flirting with a return to the NHL, and Tomas Plekanec scored their second goals of the tournament in the first period for the Czech Republic, which jumped out to a big lead and beat Latvia 5-2.
Footnotes.
World champions Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin of Russia won the compulsory portion of ice dance. Canada’s Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir were in second place, with two-time American champions Meryl Davis and Charlie White third.
• As of Thursday night, 1,363 doping tests had been conducted, and there’d been only one violation. A female Russian hockey player was reprimanded but escaped a ban after testing positive for a stimulant before the Games.
