Comments on: Timothy Goebel responds to Elvis Stojko’s Rant

By: Isiac

Isiac — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 07:55:13 +0000

It’s pretty interesting to see how opinions we disagree with are called “rants” nowadays.

I am very glad that Plushenko upon his return to a very different sport than the one he left chose NOT to adapt to the system but to challenge it. If you love the sport like Plushenko does and are heartbroken over what they’ve turned men’s skating into, the right thing would be to stay true to yourself for the love and sake of the sport. You think Plushenko can’t place triples in the second half to accumulate the points?
If you love figure skating Tim, you should be talking about what they did to Plushenko in the short program to make sure something like that never happens again to another athlete. You should hate when judges collude together. That’s the real issue here because that’s why Plushenko lost. I suppose you have no clue what I am talking about here…

By: Jen

Jen — Thu, 13 May 2010 23:27:47 +0000

Evan’s spins are waaay better than Plushenko’s so that point is silly. Naturally, women are going to have better spins than the men. They’re more flexible, duh.

I must disagree with the footwork comment you made. Most ladies can’t compare with Evan’s footwork, but that is because most women don’t compare with the men in footwork to begin with. You expect men to have faster footwork, faster taps, and so forth. In the end all Plushenko did for footwork was belly dance and make faces at the judges and audience. It was ridiculous really.

Evan is the champion to A LOT of people from what I see in comments and all these articles bashing Plushenko, lol.

Evan had the better skate, had better choreography (which is why I am baffled that they tied artistically), had better execution, and was just OVERALL BETTER. It is already explained here where Plushenko had his faults and if you can’t understand why Timothy pointed them out, then well you are clueless in skating.

And by the way, in the end, it is Evan who has the gold medal, not Plushenko. You can pretend in your little Plushy fantasy world that it’s indeed the other way around all you want, but in reality it isn’t.

Move on.

By: lisa

lisa — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 12:35:37 +0000

The girls make theirs footworks and spins even better then Lysacek, so why hi is the olympic champion in MEN’s figure skating??? Americans, you can try to say anythings for justify this wrong judge decision but for THE REST OF THE WORLD Plushenko is the real gold olympic champion 2010 in MEN’s competition. End of story.

By: Sally

Sally — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 06:00:00 +0000

As a Canadian, I am ashamed of Elvis Stoijko’s stupid remarks. While he and Evgeny were great in their time, times have changed and their programs would not/do not stand up today. Although I am not a big Lysacek fan, Evan won fair and square. I feel for the Mexican skater whom Elvis is coaching. I hope Elvis is not doing his choreography!

By: Charlotte

Charlotte — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 00:30:04 +0000

You know, the day Plushenko can complete level 4 footwork is the day I’ll say he maybe has an edge on Evan, but the handful of men who have completely level-4 footwork is a significantly smaller number than the number who have ever completed a quad. Evan’s done level-4 footwork several times. What is REALLY the hardest element in figure skating?

By: Helen J

Helen J — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 20:49:11 +0000

The craziest part of Stojko’s article was the end where he said he was going to watch hockey, “a real sport”. Nice way to insult your sport and your entire life’s work.

The other part that was crazy was where he said Takahashi should have beat Lysacek just for trying the Quad. I love Takahashi, but I don’t agree with this. It’s not just about trying this stuff, it’s about landing it.

Plushenko did not have a “great” skate. It wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t gold medal material. And I thought the hip gyrations in the middle were ridiculous – and everyone gives Weir so much flack!

By: Camelspin

Camelspin — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 20:06:30 +0000

I have two words for Stojko and Plushenko:

Sore Losers.

Geobel makes good points here.

By: Lillian

Lillian — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 19:26:32 +0000

I think the fundamental problem with Elvis Stojko’s argument is that Evgeni did NOT push the technical envelope. If you compare his jump content with what he performed in the SLC long program… it doesn’t compare. Had he pushed the boundaries of sport with two quads, one in combination, maybe one a quad sal, and matched Evan in the other jumping passes, then it would have been shocking for him to lose. Instead, the only way in which he “pushed the envelope” was one jumping pass, executed OK, and a mostly mediocre jumping passes following in a very front-loaded program. Even if you exclude the “is this a joke??” choreography (and I am NOT AT ALL an Evan Lysacek fan) and poor sit spin positions and speed, Stojko really doesn’t have an argument that Evgeni should have won.
He can only lament that the best man this Olympics doesn’t have a quad. You know what, Elvis? I have no doubt that in four years the top three skaters will have quads in both programs AND more intricate spins, choreography, and footwork. Have you seen the young guns?

By: Tiffany

Tiffany — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 17:06:17 +0000

I loved Elvis Stojko’s passion in his article. His points can be argued, but he just wants the sport to progress and evolve into higher athletics. Timothy responds well with rationality. We all saw Evan deliver the cleaner program, but we also saw Plushenko take the risks in athleticism. At the end of the day, technology helps push human evolution into higher levels of athleticism,. When you see the likes of Michael Phelps, Shaun White, and Apollo Anton Ohno pushing the excellence level of their sport, the fans and spectators in and outside figure skating want the athlete pushing the sport into higher levels of performance.

By: Pbf

Pbf — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 16:36:07 +0000

Well put Tim! I did of course go read Elvis’ piece before reading this so I was aware of as much of the situation as possible. After reading this response I wanted nothing more than to cry. I agree with Tim completely. I guess I haven’t been around the sport long enough to see how it is okay to degrade the sport with all of this controversy in the first place. There will always be flaws in the sport. Simply, it is a judged sport and thus there will be opinions involved and some human factor. But hey, we’re human too and we have to accept these imperfections and work with them. It truly brings tears to my eyes that we can’t simply be happy for the amazing job that Evan did and congratulate Evgeny on his great job too. They both succeeded at different things. Evan skated a close to technically perfect program while Evgeny tried something more challenging by including a quad. Clearly one prevailed that night over the other. If this competition was simply who could rotate the most times before hitting the ice, then hell we could all go out there and try it. The most technically unsound, artistically inept person might be able to go around four and a half times. They might not land it, but apparently that doesn’t really matter huh? Well, writing this little tidbit is definitely a better use of my time than my homework and a better outlet for my frustration than tears, Thanks Jocelyn!