Yagudin has thing for Canada, thankfully

Copyright 2002 Toronto Star Newspapers, Ltd.

Alexei Yagudin grew up in Russia and lives in the United States, but he's got this thing for Canada.

Instead of headlining the lucrative Champions on Ice tour at major American arenas, as is his right as Olympic champion, Yagudin is spending the next couple of weeks touring smaller Canadian outposts like Brampton and Kelowna and Oshawa with Skate the Nation.

Then he switches to Stars on Ice, which comes to Hamilton May 4. Only after that tour, in late May, will he catch up to Champions on Ice stateside.

True, both Stars on Ice and Skate the Nation are owned by IMG, his agents, but there's more to it than that.

"First of all, I want to thank the Canadian people," said Yagudin, who is coming off one of the greatest seasons in the history of the sport.

"Last year at Worlds, when I lost at Vancouver, it really felt like I won. People were so great to me. I just feel like I want to skate Canada, to show them my appreciation.

"I really like those two tours because they are such small groups of people. Champions on Ice, there are so many skaters. It's huge. This is more friendly, we all support each other, it's more like a family. It makes this group more interesting."

Yagudin is the hardest working man in show business. By the time he finishes exhibitions in August, he will have performed on 86 nights.

Additionally, he's spending practice hours working on two new quadruple jumps, the flip and the Salchow, because he figures he'll need them next year. He sure didn't need them this year. Yagudin dominated a tour which saw him become the first man to win the Grand Prix, European, World and Olympic titles in the same season. He was the only Olympic champion who went to Worlds, and he regained the title, which he lost last year to Evgeny Plushenko.

Plushenko skipped Worlds, but would have been hard-pressed to match Yagudin's performance.

Yagudin captured a rare perfect mark in the short program, and romped to his fourth global title, the first man to do that since Scott Hamilton in 1984, and the first to ever do it without the prop of compulsory figures.

At 22, Yagudin has to be considered among the top two or three male skaters of the modern era, which stretches back to the Second World War. He will likely compete at next year's Worlds.

"It's in Washington and I live in the U.S., so it would seem stupid not to."

And if he wins there, he'd match Dick Button's five world titles, and he'll have won them against much deeper fields.

Yagudin's wire-to-wire win at Salt Lake City was forged from the hard steel of his rigid conditioning regime, his bred-in-the-bone competitiveness and the softer artistic glaze applied by coaches Tatiana Tarasova and Nikolai Morozov. His were consummate performances, yet they left him feeling more satisfied than elated.

"For another week, I was 'Oh what I've done!'" he explains. "It was really hard to realize that I'd finally done everything that I was capable of.

"But I was way more excited after I won my first Worlds (at Minneapolis in 1998). That was my first major event and for a whole month I was like somewhere out of this world. In Minneapolis I knew I couldn't win because Todd Eldredge should win. But I won anyway.

"In Salt Lake I didn't know if I would win, but I knew that I could win. I'd worked so hard and when I got it it was like another world title, but still I was very excited for the first week. Then you get used to it."

An hour after the podium presentations, the Olympic medal winners gathered for the traditional media conference and there was an icy exchange involving Yagudin and his former coach Alexei Mishin, who handles Plushenko. Answering a question from a European reporter, Mishin said he felt he had played some part in Yagudin's gold medal. When it was his turn to speak, Yagudin shut Mishin out, crediting only Tarasova and Morozov.

"I learned a lot from him and I always remember that he was part of my career," Yagudin says. " But I still believe that it wasn't Mishin who got me the gold medal at the Olympics, it was Tatiana. It was totally her work.

" It was really funny when all season long (Mishin) was saying, like, 'He (Yagudin) is not good'. He was saying like 'It was so good that he left me, he was a bad guy. He doesn't know how to jump, he's not consistent, and Evgeny's the skater of the future.' I never said anything bad about Mishin but then at the Olympics when he said, 'It's so great to see both of my pupils finish first and second', I was like, 'Bleep', and I just wanted to defend myself and my coach.

"Later we had a meeting at Russia House and everyone from the Russian Skating Federation and the Russian Olympic Federation went up from their seats and they made a toast for Tatiana because she's like good luck for the Olympics. She always brings the gold medal. Mishin didn't get up and he said to Plushenko, 'Don't get up.'"

Although Yagudin is proud to be Russian, and expects to live in his native country once he no longer needs to remain in North America for training and income purposes, he does not trust Russian skating officials and never has. That alone should make him an honourary Canadian.

Yagudin has always thought his federation preferred Plushenko, or anyone else not named Yagudin.

"The Russian Federation and the Russian judges, they are so close, of course," he says. "I always like to look at the panel of judges and if there is no Russian judge I am really happy about that. Even at the Grand Prix Final, when I won by one judge, it wasn't the Russian judge.

"Maybe it's because of Tatiana. She's very independent. She always fights for her thoughts. And sometimes you have to be with your boss like, 'Of course, yes, I'm good', but Tatiana isn't like that. She's really strong, an independent person. That's why she's really tough with the federation, and that of course affects me.

"For example, at the Europeans, when (fellow Russian Alexander) Abt skated, he skated good, he skated clean. But I don't think his program was stronger than mine. When the marks went up and I won, the people from the Russian federation were sitting behind me and went 'Nooooo'. So they didn't care who was going to beat me, as long as someone did."

In this season for the ages, nobody could beat Yagudin whenever it really counted.

Stars info

What: Stars On Ice

Where: Copps Coliseum

When: Saturday, May 4, 7:30 p.m.

Who: Kurt Browning, Alexei Yagudin, Brian Orser, Todd Eldredge, Kristi Yamaguchi, Bourne and Kraatz, Brasseur and Eisler, Meno and Sand.