dimi wrote:Evgeny Plushenko regained amateur statusInterview with Alexander Lakernik, who is the Vice-President of the Russian National Figure Skating Federation, member of the International Skating Union and a well-respected figure skating judge...
http://english.ruvr.ru/2011/06/20/52120950.html
Actually, "first" part of this radio show (19.06.2011)
- but here is and very good short recap of Plushy's career by Elena Malakhova (journalists in the studio)
- listen audio: http://english.ruvr.ru/radio_broadcast/ ... 94572.html- download audio:
http://english.ruvr.ru/data/2011/06/20/ ... _06_11.mp3In my opinion the most important news of this week was the long-awaited comeback of the king of the ice, the legendary Rusian figure skater Evgeni Plushenko.I’m very pleased to repeat once again that the 2006 Olympic champion managed to return his amateur status which will allow him to compete at 2014 home Olympics in Sochi.
On Sunday (12th of June) the International Skating Union officially restored an amateur status of the famous Russian figure skater Evgeni Plushenko.
Evgeniy Plushenko himself, who is recovering from a knee operation in Germany, sent a message to his fans on Twitter.
"I underwent knee surgery and had my meniscus cut a bit," he wrote. "And the good news is that I can compete now. I'll be back on track in two weeks."
The Olympic champion, holder of two silver Olympic medals, three time world champion and six time European champion Evgeniy Plushenko expressed his willingness to perform at home Olympics in 2014. By this time the sportsman will probably be the most experienced athlete (Zheny will be 32), but Plushenko assured everybody that mentally and physically he is very young and strong and he will try to do everything possible to win the gold in Sochi. Evgeniy also said that he is going to take part in European and world championships that will be held next season.
Evgeniy Plushenko has already won every possible title that exists in figure skating, he is Russian, European, World and Olympic champion. So some people may ask a reasonable question why does Plushenko want to perform? What motivation does this skater have?
And as usual the answer is very simple – Evgeniy Plushenko loves figure skating. That was the reason for his first comeback in 2010 before the Olympics in 2010. And now Evgeniy confessed that he has a strong desire to show his programs in front of the home crowd in Sochi in three years.
I think it will be essential to speak about Plushenko’s biography a bit. This talented Russian skater was born in the town with a sunny name Solnechny (in Russian it means sunny). This town is situated in Khabarovskiy region. Little Zhenya started to skate at the age of four. When he was eleven years old, his ice rink in Volgograd was closed. He was then sent to St. Petersburg to train under the strict control of the famous Soviet coach Alexei Mishin.
With help of this prominent coach Plushenko made a quick and impressive success on the international figure skating scene. At the age of 14, he won the 1997 World Junior Championships. And a year later the 15-year-old Russian rising star of figure skating managed to finish third at his first senior World championship.
Of course Evgeni’s dream was to win the Olympic Games. And in 2002 at the age of 19 Plushenko came to Salt lake city to try to win his first Olympic medal. Well, probably some of our listeners remember that the Rusian team possessed two great figure skating stars at that moment. Apart from the hero of our today’s story Evgeniy Plushenko there was one more star in the Russian squad. And the name of this supestar was Alexei Yagudin.
These two outstanding athletes competed with each other at all the national and international figure skating starts. There was a fierce competition between the two men, better to say there was a real ice battle between them. So, at the 2002 Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake city Plushenko and Yagudin were co-favorites of this important for both of them tournament.
Well, in 2002 Evgeni was very young and inexperienced. Probably that’s why he couldn’t cope with his nervousness and made a huge mistake during his short program. Evgeni fell from the quadruple jump – the most important element in men’s figure skating. Plushenko finished 4th in the short program. But he didn’t lose chances to be on the Olympic podium. Plushenko delivered practically flawless free-program performance to "Carmen" and pulled up to finish in 2nd place overall.
But of course the young and ambitious Russian skater was not satisfied with this result. He decided to continue skating till the next Olympics in Torino. I think that his desire and even obsession to win the Olympis Games was also backed by the fact that his teammate and the main rival Alexei Yagudin earned gold in Salt Lake City.
I should say that Plushenko won most of the competitions he took part in the following four years. Of course this was an unbelievable result, because Evgeni finished second only twice during this time. The first time he was outscored by the Canadian skater Emanuel Sandhu at the 2003-2004 Grand Prix Final. But this loss was not Plushenko’s fault. It was a technical mistake made by the computer. One element of Evgeni’s program wasn’t counted. And the second defeat was inflicted by the French sportsman Brian Joubert at the 2004 European championship. But it was impossible to say that the sportsman from France won, it was Evgeni who lost, he made so many mistakes that it was even surprising Plushenko took silver at this championship. But at the following world start the Russian star of figure skating proved that this defeat was just an embarrassing accident.
Going into the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin Plushenko was the uncontested favorite Plushenko delivered two solid programs and to great delight and happiness of all the Russian fans Evgeni fulfilled his Olympic dream, by winning gold in Italy. It’s necessary to say that Evgeni practically destroyed the intrigue of the tournament form the very beginning. He received the second starting position in short program. And I do remember that everybody strated to express sympathy to Evegeni by saying that the second number is a very unsuccessful position, all his main rivals would perform behind him, judges will be greedy for high scores and so on. But Plushenko didn’t pay much attention to this remarks, he came out to the ice and showed practically flawless program. He finished the first day of the competition ten points ahead of his closest rival, setting a new ISU record for the short program. The next day he proved to be the strongest skater in the world by delivering fantastic free program which allowed him to win gold at the Olympic Games of 2006. Plushenko's free skating music was specially arranged for him by violinist Edvin Marton.
After the Olympic triumph Plushenko made s decision to retire. But when he saw the poor results of Russian skaters at the 2007 figure skating world championships (the worst since 1960), Plushenko was worried that Russia could lose its status as a figure skating world power. So, in April of 2007 he announced that he decided to return to competitive skating. Plushenko also expressed wish to perform at the Olympic Games in Vancouver.
I think some of our listeners may be aware that in 2008 Plushenko, together with violinist Edvin Marton, accompanied the Russian pop singer Dima Bilan on stage to win the Eurovision Song Contest in Serbia. Plushenko skated on stage as part of the performance.
In March 2009 Plushenko resumed full-time training under control of his longtime coach Alexei Mishin in order to prepare for the 2010 Olympics.
He skated at the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, Canada, and received a score of 90.85 for his short program performance, breaking the Olympic record and leading all competitors. But finally Plushenko was outscored by the American sportsman Evam Lysacek who didn’t even include a quadruple jump into his Olympic program. Following his skate, Plushenko said "Without a quad it's not men's figure skating. I will do the quad in any case. I believe that the quad is the future of figure skating. The quad is necessary, that is my opinion. I think we need to change the judging system – a quad is a quad. If an Olympic champion doesn't do a quad, well I don't know”
So, now we all know that Zheny is going to participate in his 4th Olympics in Sochi. Let’s wish him good luck and excellent state of health. He has already proved that he is a great skater, now he can skate for his own delight and pleasure.