Men's event | 2001 Worlds | Plushenko 🇷🇺🥇Yagudin 🇷🇺🥈 Eldredge 🇺🇸🥉Liu 🇦🇺

Описание: HD format, Australian coverage (commentators: Belinda Noonan) Sandy Roberts), revised upload. Performances & interviews from the men's event at the 2001 World Figure Skating Championships (Vancouver, Canada), marked (*) below:
Final Rank Name Nation TFP QB QA SP FS
1 Evgeni Plushenko Russia 2.0 1 1 1* [Евгений Плющенко]
2 Alexei Yagudin Russia 5.2 5 2 2* [Алексей Ягудин]
3 Todd Eldredge United States 5.6 2 3 3*
14 Anthony Liu Australia 24.8 10 8* 16*
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[Washington Post extract] Plushenko's Sweet Dream | Russian Makes Gold a Reality Eldredge Wins Bronze - March 22, 2001
"This is my year," Plushenko said just before taking his place on the medal stand -- this time a step above Yagudin, to whom he gave a quick, curt handshake. "I could have won last year, too, but I didn't know how to focus and I thought too much about the medal. This year I just felt good."

Plushenko certainly looked fearless from the start of the free skate tonight, setting off a firework-filled program with a sparkling quadruple toe-triple toe-double loop combination. Six more triple jumps followed, along with a number of moves designed to show off his flexibility and form, although no element had quite the emotion of Plushenko's finishing pose, in which he punched two fists in the air over and over again.

When he finally put his hands to his side, he just stood on the ice and listened to the crowd, which began chanting "six, six, six" toward the scorer's table. Plushenko let their words hang over him for a few minutes -- "I just wanted to stay a little bit and look around," he said later -- and then finally stepped behind the boards to hear scores that didn't include any perfect scores but plenty of 5.9s.
"Getting 5.8s and 5.9s is pretty good," he said. "I'm very, very happy."

Making the victory sweeter was that it unseated Yagudin, who took the world title last year even after Plushenko defeated him at the European championships. Former training partners, the pair have not gotten along since Yagudin left Russia to train with a different coach in the United States, and although Plushenko again won the European title earlier this year, he still worried that Yagudin, a three-time world champion, would be able to sweep into Vancouver and win the gold medal once more.

Instead, Yagudin did more hobbling than cruising, entering Monday's compulsory round with severe foot pain from a jogging injury suffered a few days earlier. His first performance was a disaster, rife with two falls and five popped jumps, and while his short program went much more smoothly thanks to a series of painkiller injections, Yagudin knew when he stepped onto the ice it would be tough for him to regain his crown.
Less than a minute in, he knew it would be impossible. Fumbling on his opening jump and touching his hands to the ice on the next, Yagudin opted to skip the second quadruple jump he had planned for his program, instead focusing on "just skating well for the crowd and for myself."

He finished to a roar of appreciation from the fans and with good enough marks to best Eldredge, who followed him with a slightly less technical performance, although he was also left with the knowledge that if he is going to have a chance at the Games title next year, he will have to skate better.

"I'm going to have to change my preparations, my practices, everything," said Yagudin, who withstood seven injections of painkillers just to skate tonight. "Before it was much easier to win, but now it's gotten harder and harder. It's incredible. Everyone is doing so many quads."
Actually, almost everyone is doing quadruple jumps -- for the third night in a row, Eldredge elected to perform a triple jump in the spot in his program reserved for a quad, saying he preferred to skate a clean, artistic program rather than risk falling and ruining his concentration. The judges penalized him somewhat for the decision, ranking him behind Yagudin even though Eldredge skated without error.

Still, the marks were high enough to guarantee Eldredge third place, making him, at 29, the oldest man to win a world medal since 1931.

"It was almost a last-second decision" not to try the quad, Eldredge said. "I was thinking, 'What the heck,' and then I thought, 'If I miss it, I could really tighten up.' "

More important to Eldredge than the jump -- or even the bronze medal -- was that both he and Goebel finished within the top seven here, guaranteeing the United States three men's berths in next year's Winter Games. The number of spots allotted to each country depends on how that country's skaters perform the year before, and Eldredge wanted to make sure there would be enough room for himself, Goebel and former national champion Michael Weiss to all make it to the Games.

"That's what we came here to do, and we did it," Eldredge said. "It was a good night."
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