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Young guns get their shot
A last-minute replacement for reigning Olympic champion Ilya Kulik, who pulled out of this week's world championships because of a bad back, this latest rising star from Russia has the skating set in a tizzy.
Plushenko, who turned 15 last October, is, in fact, too young to enter these worlds, but was allowed in after winning the world junior championship last year.
At the senior European championships this past January in Milan, the St. Petersburg native placed second to veteran star Alexei Yagudin, although many on hand felt the younger Russian deserved the gold.
Plushenko, who is coached by the legendary Alexei Mishin and trains in The Netherlands, has nailed a pair of quadruple toe loops, as well as a triple-triple jump combination in competition. It is said that his artistry is incredibly refined for one so young.
"He's a beautiful skater, just beautiful," said Lucie Spanjer, a respected figure-skating writer from The Netherlands. "The only skaters skating with heart these days are the Russians, and Plushenko is definitely one of them."
Besides his artistic mastery and the fact he can nail almost every technical trick in the book, including a Stojko-esque quad-toe-triple toe jump combo, which he has yet to perform in competition, Plushenko is also the first male skater to perform the Biellmann spin, a unique and technically difficult spin -- especially for men -- wherein the skater lifts one leg over his head while spinning.
With the withdrawal of the top three skaters from the Nagano Olympics -- Kulik, Canada's Elvis Stojko and Philippe Candeloro of France -- there's talk that Plushenko could actually win this event, although that would be a long shot, with the likes of 1996 world champion Todd Eldredge of the U.S., the '97 world bronze-medallist Yagudin, the '96 European champion Viacheslav Zagorodniuk of Ukraine and British star Steve Cousins entered.
The buzz in the Canadian camp is of future showdowns at worlds and Olympics between Russia's young gun, Plushenko, and Canada's hot shot, Emanuel Sandhu who, at 17, is skating at his first worlds.
Jeff Langdon, Canada's other entry in the men's singles event, and Sandhu qualified for the men's final, which begins with the short program on Wednesday, by finishing fifth and eighth respectively in yesterday's opening qualifying round.
"This is definitely an experience," Sandhu said. "More people showed up for the qualifying here than they did for the actual event at the junior worlds."