Lysacek gold fails to silence quad debate

VANCOUVER - Evgeni Plushenko talked the talk. Evan Lysacek skated the walk.

The long-limbed Lysacek snaked through a nearly perfect routine to win the gold medal in men's figure skating Thursday night - even without the quadruple jump that Plushenko loudly insisted was a must.

The competition decided the Olympic champion, but did not settle the debate over figure skating's direction.

"Without quad," Plushenko said after settling for silver, "it is not figure skating. It is dancing. That is my point."

Lysacek responded by saying: "I spent the last year perfecting 4 minutes, 40 seconds. If the medal was for your best jump, they would give you 10 seconds and no music."

Lysacek, an Illinois native living in Hollywood, became the first American to the win the gold medal since Brian Boitano in 1988.

Dancing or skating to Scheherazade, by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Lysacek nailed his intricate and fluid routine, then pumped his fists five times as the crowd at the Pacific Coliseum roared its approval. Lysacek, in second place by fractions of a point going into the free skate, earned a strong score of 167.37 from the judges.

His total for the competition: 257.67 points - just 0.66 points lower than Plushenko's gold-medal total from 2006. The judges rewarded Lysacek's fluidity and mastery of all the small elements between the big flashy jumps and twists.

"Twenty years ago, we needed quad to win," legendary Russian coach Alexei Mishin said. "And now we don't need to do quad?"

Noting the Olympic motto of "Faster, higher, stronger," he added, "The rule will be changed."

Coatesville's Johnny Weir, skating sans faux or real fur on his costume, finished in sixth place - a scoring result that drew boos from the crowd. Weir added a quadruple toe loop to his program, but cut it to a triple after Japan's Daisuke Takahashi fell on his first jump.

Weir, wearing a crown of roses on his head, smiled and waved to the crowd after receiving his score.

"I was crying all day for no reason," Weir said. "I just had so much energy. But I'm happy."

Lysacek, clad in a black costume with a sequined snake coiled around his neck, had the mixed blessing of skating first among the top six skaters. That allowed him a fresh sheet of ice on which to set the bar and put pressure on the other competitors, but denied him a chance to skate while knowing how many points he needed for a medal.

Plushenko took the ice knowing he was 166.42 points behind Lysacek. He finished a full 1.31 points behind the American.

Attempting to become the first man to retain his Olympic gold medal since Dick Button in 1952, Plushenko wiggled his hips and blew kisses to draw the crowd into his complicated and challenging routine. He nailed his routine-opening quad toe loop, but it wasn't enough.

Takahashi, in a virtual first-place tie with Plushenko and Lysacek coming into the evening, skated beautifully after the fall to lock up the bronze medal.

For all the sequins and fabulous hair, this competition had an unfamiliar undercurrent:

Machismo.

For Plushenko, who was coaxed out of retirement for these Games by the Russian Federation, it was all about the quadruple jump. He employed quads to rack up huge scores in his easy victory in Turin and had nothing but disdain for skaters who did not include a quad in their programs.

Skaters like Lysacek.

"Of course we need quadruples," Plushenko said after the short program. "That's the future of figure skating. Without the quadruple, I'm sorry, but it's not men."

It is, in other words, the women's competition. Men have been landing quads in competition since Kurt Browning performed one at the 1998 world championships.

The trend in the sport at that point, and until the judging system was revamped after the scandal at Salt Lake City in 2002, was for more and more daring athleticism over artistry.

But the new scoring system, arcane as it is to the average viewer, rewards both the power required to do four revolutions in the air and land cleanly and the grace to execute a clean but less demanding program. Many skaters, including Lysacek, have calculated that the reward for landing a quad doesn't outweigh the risk of not landing one.

Takahashi offered living proof, falling hard on his very first jump - a quad toe loop - and taking himself out of gold-medal contention.

The last two world champions, Lysacek and Canada's Jeffrey Buttle, won gold medals without attempting a single quad.

Plushenko has said he was appalled by that. As a major figure in the history of the sport, with a silver medal in Salt Lake City in addition to his gold in Turin, he felt an obligation to do something about what he saw as a regression. It is one of the reasons he has said he decided to return for these Olympics at age 27.

With the battle lines etched in the ice, Plushenko performed a quad in his short program and earned a score of 90.85. Lysacek did not, but his technical and artistic excellence was good enough to put him in a virtual tie at 90.30 points.

The push-and-pull between athleticism and artistry in the judged Olympic sports is nothing new. Usually, however, it is the Americans who specialize in power and risk while the Russians and other Eastern Europeans prefer the more elegant approach.

In Beijing, for example, the gymnastics judges favored the Russian-style grace of Nastia Liukin over the athleticism of Shawn Johnson.

It is not an either-or proposition, of course. Plushenko is a wonderful artistic skater as well as a powerful one. That's why he was able to deliver such a huge margin of victory over silver medalist Stephane Lambiel in '06. In that competition, Plushenko would have had to break into the Hokey Pokey in the free skate to be denied the gold medal.

This week's short program set up one of the most competitive finals ever, which made the brouhaha over quads that much more compelling. It was no less than a contest for the sequined heart of men's figure skating.