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Elvis drums up a winning beat
Stojko charges into lead at Skate Canada
Oh, he skipped the quad in his short program at Skate Canada, but just about everything else about his skate to rumbling taiko drums was vintage Stojko -- crisp, clean, powerful.
And because his chief rival at this event, world bronze-medallist Evgeny Plushenko of Russia, blew out of his quad attempt, Stojko sits atop the standings heading into tomorrow's men's free skate.
Plushenko is second, Ukrainian Evgeny Pliuta third, and Stojko's stablemate at the Mariposa school in Barrie, Jeff Langdon of Smiths Falls, sits fourth of the 11 men.
Stojko's marks, 5.5-5.7 for the required elements, 5.6-5.8 for presentation, reflected the fact that he touched his free foot down on landing his triple axel-triple toe combination, but he did prove he can skate a clean program, something he was unable to do last week at Skate America, when he placed fourth. Of course, last week he tried the quad in the short, and fell on the landing.
"It felt really good, very very much over my feet," said Stojko, who said leaving the quad out was an effort to get a strong overall program. That he did, with the combination and a triple lutz the key elements. "I wanted to get a good feeling out there instead of going for the gusto here ... we wanted to get a good performance out there, hopefully a triple-triple. We did. Everything felt great."
Like his more highly celebrated clubmate, Langdon is also on the mend. Turning in a clean program of his own was a strong showing considering he is continuing to rehab a badly sprained ankle suffered several weeks ago in training.
"I can't do much more than that," said the 23-year-old, who has two straight top-10 finishes at the world championships. "It felt good to do it when it counted."
Even with his ankle at only about 80-85%, his bluesy program included a triple axel and the triple flip-double toe combination. With one strong skate under his belt, he's now looking for a medal.
"I'm looking forward to (the free skate) now. I skate last, which is good, so as soon as I skate I'll know how I ended up. I'm going to try and move up one spot and get a medal. That would be nice ... to start my season off."
For Stojko, a gold medal here would be a big step back from the crushing disappointment last winter at the Nagano Olympics, when a torn groin muscle cost him a shot at gold, forcing him to settle for silver. It would be a yardstick on what is shaping up as a long season, with six major competitions and a 12-stop show tour later this month.
"Each year there's always new challenges that we face," said Stojko, now a veritable skating greybeard at age 26. "You take your experiences from previous years and apply them and deal with the situation at the end, but we're always up for the challenge."
The next challenge is the free skate tomorrow. There are already rumbles about the theme of the program, from the fantasy movie Merlin. It's another in the long line of movie theme programs (Far and Away, Dragon, 1492, Braveheart, The Ghost and The Darkness), and the critics are muttering been there, done that. The job with Merlin will be not only to get himself healthy enough to present the whole technical package -- he says the quad is a go for tomorrow -- but also to provide enough of a new twist on this old theme to keep the judges interested.
But that is a question for another day.
There were no rumblings last night, save for the drums to which he skated. The critics will have to wait. For Stojko is coming back.
Defiant and strong, as usual.