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Close call for Stojko
The three-time world figure skating champion eventually withdrew from the show -- the last stop on his gruelling Tour of Champions -- only after his entourage forced him to see the light.
"If the rest of us hadn't been there, he probably would have gone ahead (and skated)," Stojko's manager, Ed Futerman, said. "He didn't want to disappoint anybody. He had never missed a show before."
Stojko decided not to skate, but only after conferring with Futerman, his choreographer, Uschi Keszler, and his mother, Irene.
Stojko felt some pain in his groin during a pre-show warmup. Given events of the past year, the soreness was a cause for alarm. Stojko, 26, seriously aggravated a groin injury at the Nagano Olympics but managed to pull out a gutsy silver-medal performance. Still, the injury kept him off the ice for months and doctors warned the Richmond Hill skater heading into this season to back down if he experienced any pain or major discomfort.
Wanted to skate
That was the case on Saturday, although Stojko was still determined to skate.
"Elvis being Elvis, he was prepared initially to skate (and) that could have been a disaster," Futerman said.
Futerman, a Toronto lawyer, said Stojko eventually realized that performing was not an option. As for the groin, the popular skater will resume light skating today or tomorrow but will not practise any jumps for two to three weeks. Futerman is confident, however, his client will be ready for the Canadian championships, Jan. 27-31 in Ottawa.
Futerman dismissed the notion Stojko was foolhardy to undertake a 15-day, nine-stop cross-Canada tour with his groin still not 100% recovered. Legions of Stojko fanatics expressed concern, mainly via the Internet, that the skater was on a one-way road to ruin after he had announced his busy fall schedule.
Stojko opened the season at Skate America in Detroit (Oct. 29-Nov. 1), where he finished fourth, competed the next weekend at the SunLife Skate Canada competition in Kamloops, B.C., where he skated to an impressive second-place showing, rested for a few days in Vancouver, and then kicked off his annual tour on the West Coast one week after Skate Canada ended.
Yet, despite his limitations, Futerman insisted there was never any danger of Stojko aggravating the groin to the point of his missing the 1998-99 competitive season -- as long as he listened to his body, which he did ignore for a while on Saturday.