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Friday, February 13, 1998 'It's not only Elvis'
Four skaters were far and away better than the rest of the field, with very little separating each other. But the Olympic judges chose to shaft 17-year-old Alexei Yagudin. They put him fourth. You can win the event from any one of the top three positions by winning the long program. But not from fourth. And that means Yagudin would need some rather remarkable things to happen for him to get the gold. "It will be, I think, impossible,'' he said. "But I would like to be second or third. I think that is possible.'' Asked for his prediction, then, of who would be first, he picked Stojko with no explanation. Ilya Kulik, who won the short program, disagrees. "I'm looking forward to a battle,'' he said. '`All the guys are so good. You cannot say it's only Elvis.'' Kulik was happy with his short, which counts for a third of the final total. "It was fine. It was an OK program. It wasn't my best. But it was OK. It was working by the end.'' Todd Eldredge wasn't bothered by not winning the short program. A U.S. competitor has never won the short program in the Olympics but the U.S. has landed a skater on the podium in the men's event all but three times since 1948. "When I first started to skate, I was a little nervous. I was just happy to get out there and skate clean and do what I know I can do,'' said Eldredge. "Before I went out there, I thought, 'All right, you've done the short program clean and well all year. Just one more. That's what it took for me to relax. "I did everything I wanted to do. I skated great today.'' Eldredge says he isn't worried about not having a quad for the long program. "If the quad were such a huge issue, you'd do the quad and not the rest of the program,'' he said. "It's a 41/2-minute skate and it's the 41/2 minutes that'll make the difference.'' |