Touring ice skater eyes return to top

Alexei Yagudin's skating career has had stellar highs.

Starting in 1998 with victories at Skate America and the Lalique Trophy, plus a European Championship and a World Championship (he became the first Russian man to win a world title and was, at 18, the second-youngest man to do so), he went on to rack up titles at Skate America (1999) and Skate Canada ('99, 2000, 2001), as well as two more European Championships ('99, 2002) and three more World Championships ('99, 2000 and 2002).

And he took Olympic gold in Salt Lake City last year, making him the first skater to win the sport's four major titles in one season: the Grand Prix Final, the European Championship, the Olympics and the World Championships.

But it also had rock-bottom lows.

"In 1999, I was the best; I won 10 competitions out of 11," Yagudin, 23, said in a phone interview from a stop on the Smucker's Stars on Ice tour in Jacksonville, Fla. Yagudin is recuperating from a hip injury, which kept him out of the recent Worlds in Washington, and is using the Stars on Ice tour to keep busy and rehabilitate.

"And then I started to lose the competitions. It wasn't because I was weaker; [it was] just because we're all human and sometimes bad things happen, sometimes good things happen. ... In the 2001 season, I lost all the major events."

Using as his inspiration tennis star Andre Agassi, who was ranked No. 1 for a time, then slid to near-obscurity in the rankings before battling back to top form, Yagudin, too, turned around his fortunes.

"I just didn't give up; I just kept working," he said. "And then finally, I won all the major events last year. So I just really believe that, yes, you have to be talented, but ... the huge amount of success goes to work. You have to keep working, and then everything will be fine."

A sickly child, the native of St. Petersburg, Russia, started skating at age 4 at the urging of his mother. In fact, he says his history-making triumph at the 1999 Worlds was for his mom, "who spent so many years being with me and dragging me from the school to the rink and back and forth."

"I wasn't really healthy when I was a kid [and] they had to put me into sports," he said. "Figure skating was really popular at that time, and that's how I ended up being in figure skating."

Yagudin skates in six numbers in the Stars on Ice tour, one being the new short program he plans to use in future competitions. He likes the tour because he can show different sides of himself and participate in the show's creation.

"There's a lot of possibility on this tour," he said. "I just love to be involved in actual figure skating as much as possible.

"And also, there's not a lot of people [in the cast] and we're all close; it's like a big family here," he added.

While his hip heals -- and while the World Championships go on without him -- Yagudin vows he'll be back for next season's major skating events. He said he plans to fly to Washington and check out the competition the following day.

"It's still bothering me, but it's better now and I really believe that I will go back next year," he said.

As for the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino, Italy, Yagudin says he'll wait and see.

"It's so far [away] right now, and it all depends on my health," he said. "I will compete until that day, that moment, when I feel that I cannot keep up with the others. Then I will stop."

After that, he said he'd like to "spend as many years as possible on the Stars on Ice tour."

This edition of the tour also marks the touring debut of Canadian pairs skaters Jamie Sale and David Pelletier and their Russian counterparts, Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze, all of whom gained international fame following the judging scandal at the 2002 Olympics.