Here are comments from "Quad King" Tim Goebel about Elvis, Evan and Plushy, from "Current Skate of Mind."
"I was interested in what Timothy Goebel, 2002 Olympic Bronze medalist, thought of the scathing article Elvis Stojko wrote about the Men’s results, called “The Night they Killed Figure Skating”. (To read it, click here.) Tim sent me this rebuttal:
“In my last season of competitive skating my coach, Audrey Weisiger, had a great quote: “Adapt, or die!”. Referring to the new judging system, she was noting the importance of being able to make changes to a program mid-season, in order to maximize points.
Evan, and many of his peers, have done just that. They have adapted. While I do agree with Elvis that the current system fails to appropriately encourage and reward risk, there are improvements the new regime has brought to the sport, as well. The most important, perhaps, is the importance placed on quality. Evan did not do a quad. Elvis is correct in saying that Evan’s jumps weren’t close to the techinical ability of Evgeny- they far exceeded his. Plushenko gave a gritty performance, and is a phenomenal competitor, but the jump quality was lacking. He barely hung on to his solo triple axel, and although Evan had a slight break in his axel combo, it was better. Lysacek did a beautiful triple lutz-triple toe, Plu barely squeaked by on his solo lutz, and did a scratchy triple lutz-double toe. Grade of execution counts for a lot, as it well should, and in every case Evan’s execution was stronger.
Another positive step the new system makes, is rewarding a well balanced program by giving bonus to difficult elements late in the program. Plushenko has one of the best triple axels in the business. He could easily do it in the bonus, but he elected not to. He front-loaded his program, and Evan spread his difficulty throughout. I appreciate how difficult that is- in the Salt Lake City Olympics, the second quad sal in my long was around the 3 minute mark. It requires a lot of training to make the big tricks happen late in a program, and Evan did so with ease.
I do not like to see the quad being such a rarity in the sport these days, and I do think that the system needs a major overhaul to encourage athletes to take risk. However, athletes must adapt to the system that they are competing under. With the help of Lori Nichol and Frank Carroll, Evan constructed a program that uses his strengths to maximize his points. He did what he needed to do to be successful within the constructs of the current system, and delivered two of the strongest programs he could possibly skate under a great deal of pressure. And that is the sign of a true champion.
In order to help the sport move forward, I would like to see a dialogue open between the ISU and former athletes who have performed multiple quads in competition. Elvis, myself, and many of our peers have invaluble competition experience for understanding the difficulty in executing these jumps. I agree that the system needs some major adjustments. Working together with the ISU, I am confident that we could come up with a point spread that would encourage and reward athletes to attempt more difficult elements, and do so without turning the sport into a jump contest.”
