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Stojko misses quad but finishes second
In his return to competitive skating, Stojko was the only one of 12 men to attempt a quadruple jump in last night's short program. He fell on the jump but otherwise skated strongly in his first big test since his Olympic injury.
Stojko stands second behind Russia's Alexei Yagudin, who won the world title in Stojko's absence last April. American Michael Weiss is third and Russia's Alexei Urmanov is fourth.
When Stojko finished his practice yesterday afternoon, he said that there was a little twinge in the groin area, but that he was feeling "99.5 per cent better."
While Stojko has been back on the ice since June, his training schedule has been dictated by what the injury would permit him to do. Although he can withstand more pain than most athletes, he never extended himself beyond the limits of the discomfort. That made for a long and sometimes frustrating road back.
"I'm back now because I didn't push it," Stojko said. "It felt so long because you couldn't see the light at the end of the tunnel. Now I can see it."
His coach Doug Leigh said the moment of truth -- testing the recovery under the hot fire of competition -- had to come sometime and it might as well come at the first Grand Prix event. He says he's not worried that Stojko, the ultimate competitor, will try to overdo things in the company of three of the top male skaters on the planet: Urmanov, Yagudin and Weiss.
Stojko embraces the concept of an unusually tough field for a fall international. "Absolutely. It keeps you on your toes."
The last time Stojko skated competitively, it was with one leg that was virtually useless and with the disability kept absolutely secret. Leigh and Stojko did not want Ilia Kulik, the eventual champion, to know that he had to take fewer risks. Perhaps more importantly, they didn't want the judges to think they were watching a bird with a broken wing.
"It's all perception," Leigh said. "If they knew he was hurt, right away they'd be saying, 'oh, he's pale', and 'oh, he's slow.'"
And there is rarely a sympathy vote among judges, especially if the skater happens to be a Canadian. Nor would Leigh want one.
But will that be any different here? In the past six months, people who'd never heard of the adductor muscle can now write a thesis on it. Judges read the papers, even the Canadian ones.
"Yeah, everyone knows. But they also know he's recovering. We have the artillery, but maybe it's not at full strength. It's like Paul Kariya. Are you going to put him on the ice the first time back and expect him to get a hat-trick?"
Kariya, maybe not. Stojko? Most of us probably would.
Stojko will unveil his new long program, to the soundtrack of the movie Merlin, in tomorrow's finale. He has retained his Olympic short program, the off-rhythms of Japanese taiko drums, partly because he felt it had never been skated to its peak, because of the injury at Olympics, partly because of the truncated training period.