Evan Lysacek

Evan Lysacek
Lysacek with gold medal at the award ceremony for the 2009 World Cup
Full name	Evan Frank Lysacek
nation	United States
birthday	4th June 1985 (age 35)
place of birth	Chicago, Illinois
size	188 cm
Career
discipline	Single run
society	DuPage FSC
Trainer	Frank Carroll, Maria Jeżak-Athey, Wiktor Kudriawtsew, Ken Congemi
choreographer	Lori Nichol, Tatjana Tarassowa, Shanetta Folle, Kurt Browning, Oleg Epstein
status	active
Medal table
Olympic medals 1 × 0 × 0 × World Cup medals 1 × 0 × 2 × VKM medals 2 × 1 × 2 ×
winter Olympics gold Vancouver 2010 Men's  World figure skating championships bronze Moscow 2005 Men's bronze Calgary 2006 Men's gold Los Angeles 2009 Men's Four continents championships bronze Hamilton 2004 Men's gold Gangneung 2005 Men's gold Colorado Springs 2007 Men's bronze Goyang 2008 Men's silver Vancouver 2009 Men's
Personal best
Total points 257.67 Olympia 2010  Freestyle 167.37 Olympia 2010  Short program 90.30 Olympia 2010
Placements in the figure skating Grand Prix
Podium placements 1. 2. 3.  Grand Prix Final 1 0 1  Grand Prix competitions 2 6th 2
last change: December 16, 2010

Evan Frank Lysacek (born June 4, 1985 in Chicago , Illinois ) is a retired American figure skater . He is the Olympic champion of 2010 , the world champion of 2009 and the Four Continents champion of 2005 and of 2007.

Career

Evan Lysacek was born in Chicago on June 4, 1985 and grew up in Naperville. His mother, Tanya, is a substitute teacher and his father, Don, is a building contractor. Lysacek has an older sister, Laura, and a younger sister, Christina.

Lysacek has Italian and Czech ancestors, his great-grandfather František Lysáček emigrated from Czechoslovakia to Chicago in 1925 . Lysacek is a Greek Orthodox Christian .

Evan Lysacek started figure skating when he was 8 years old. His grandmother gave him ice skates for Christmas. He originally wanted to play ice hockey , but his mother signed him up for figure skating training with his sister Laura in order to learn to skate. He stayed at figure skating after a coach recognized his talent and took him to initial successes.

In 1999 Lysacek became the US Master of Novices. A year later he succeeded in doing this in the juniors. A successive victory at the US championships in the novice and junior area was recently achieved by Terry Kubicka . In figure skating junior world championships Lysacek was runner-up in 2001, 2003 and 2004, in 2001 behind his compatriot and later permanent rival Johnny Weir , which meant the first US double victory at junior world championships since 1987. When he won the silver medal in 2003, he got his first three-time Axel in the course of the tournament.

After graduating from school, he went to California in 2003 to train with Frank Carroll at the Toyota Sports Center in El Segundo .

Lysacek won his first international medal with bronze at the Four Continents Championships in 2004 behind Canadians Jeffrey Buttle and Emanuel Sandhu . A year later he won the tournament and thus his first international title. He relegated Li Chengjiang and Daisuke Takahashi to their places.

World Figure Skating Championships 2005

2005 was also the year of his first participation in the senior world championship . In Moscow he immediately won the bronze medal behind Stéphane Lambiel and Jeffrey Buttle, although his goal was only to take part in the freestyle and at the national championships was only the third-best American behind Johnny Weir and Timothy Goebel , but in the short program the only one to receive 6.0 of his career.

In 2006 Lysacek finished second behind Weir in the US championships. At the Olympic Winter Games in Turin , he contracted gastrointestinal flu after the short program, which he finished in tenth place. Unable to train and using antibiotics , he still decided to run the freestyle. It was his best freestyle to date. He landed eight triple jumps and finished third in the freestyle classification, which earned him fourth place overall, seven points behind the bronze medal. At the following World Cup in Calgary he was able to win the bronze medal again, as in the previous year. This time behind Stéphane Lambiel and Brian Joubert . He succeeded in doing this despite renewed health problems. Due to a bacterial infection that even caused him to cough up blood, he had to take three different antibiotics. After the World Cup he toured as a permanent member of Champions on Ice .

Lysacek and his trainer Frank Carroll at the 2007 Grand Prix Final

In 2007 he was the first US senior champion in Spokane . He landed a quadruple jump in the competition for the first time, namely a quadruple toe loop in a combination with a subsequent triple toe loop. A week later, this quadruple combination in the freestyle helped him to his second gold medal at the Four Continents Championships after 2005, this time ahead of Jeffrey Buttle and compatriot Jeremy Abbott . After the short program he was still in fourth place, but, as so often, his freestyle helped him to improve. At the World Championships he tried a quadruple jump in the short program for the first time, again in a quadruple-triple combination. This did not succeed, however, he had to get out of the quadruple jump, touched the ice with his hand and could only add a double jump. He didn't succeed in the planned combination in the freestyle either. He was fifth in both the short program and the freestyle and thus also in the final ranking.

In 2008 Lysacek was able to defend his title at the US championships in the tie-breaker despite being tied with Johnny Weir. In the four continents championship he was third. He had to cancel the world championship this year because he injured himself a week before trying a triple axel in training. In the summer he toured with Stars on Ice .

World Figure Skating Championships 2009

In 2009 he was only third in the US championships behind Jeremy Abbott and Brandon Mroz . At the four continents championship in Vancouver, he won silver behind Patrick Chan . At the end of March, the World Championships followed in Lysacek's home in Los Angeles . After the short program he was in second place behind Brian Joubert, but won the freestyle and became world champion . It was the first US title since Todd Eldredge's 1996 win . Lysacek suffered from a fatigue fracture in his left foot, which prevented him from attempting a quadruple jump. After the season he took two months off to heal the injury. In November, he won by a large margin at Skate America for the first time in his career, after having been runner-up three times from 2005 to 2007. In December Lysacek also won the Grand Prix final , ahead of Nobunari Oda and Johnny Weir.

Evan Lysacek at the 2010 Olympic Games

2010 Winter Olympics

In contrast, 2010 began with a small disappointment. Lysacek was only second in the national championships and clearly had to admit defeat to Jeremy Abbott. Abbott, Lysacek and Weir were qualified for the Olympic Games in Vancouver . In the short program for Stravinsky's The Firebird , he achieved a personal best with 90.30 points, placing himself just behind Yevgeny Pljuschtschenko and just ahead of Daisuke Takahashi . Lysacek won the freestyle with a personal best of 167.37 points and thus also the gold medal with a personal best of 257.67 points, just 1.31 points ahead of Pljushchenko. It was the first non-Soviet or non-Russian Olympic victory and thus the first US Olympic victory since Brian Boitano in Calgary in 1988 and the first Olympic victory for a reigning world champion since Scott Hamilton in 1984 .

Controversy arose after the competition. The returning defending champion Plyushchenko was considered a favorite and, in contrast to Lysacek, showed four-fold jumps. He felt cheated of victory. In contrast to Lysacek, Pljushchenko made a few mistakes in the freestyle, so few of his jumps were flawless. Lysacek's freestyle to Rimski-Korsakow's Scheherazade was flawless and extremely compact. After the competition, many experts expressed their opinions and there were lively discussions, including about the future of figure skating. Lysacek canceled the world championship after his Olympic victory.

Lysacek is also studying acting at the Professional Arts School in Beverly Hills . He does power yoga as a fitness training and is committed to a cancer foundation.

Awards

• 2010 USOC Athlete of the Year

Results

Championship / year	1999	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010
winter Olympics								4th				1.
World championships							3.	3.	5.		1.
Four continents championships					10.	3.	1.		1.	3.	2.
World Team Trophy											1.
Junior World Championships			2.		2.	2.
American championships	1st N.	1st J	12.	12.	7th	5.	3.	2.	1.	1.	3.	2.
-
Grand Prix competition / season	98/99	00/01	00/01	01/02	02/03	03/04	04/05	05/06	06/07	07/08	08/09	09/10
Grand Prix Final									Z	3.		1.
Skate America							5.	2.	2.	2.	3.	1.
Skate Canada											3.
Cup of Russia							5.
NHK Trophy								2.
Cup of China									1.	2.		2.

• N = novices; J = juniors; Z = withdrawn

Evan Lysacek at the 2010 Olympic Games exhibition

Web links

Commons : Evan Lysacek  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Evan Lysacek in the database of the International Skating Union (English)
• Evan Lysacek in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )
• Evan Lysacek's website

Individual evidence

1. ↑ http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/s_425000.html  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
2. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from February 19, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
3. ↑ ^{a b} Live Internet Chat at Skate Today ( Memento from February 1, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
4. ↑ http://www.ahaonline.cz/cz/olympiada/45057/ceske-zlato:-ivan-lysacek---fenomenalniho-pljuscenka-na-olympiade-porazil-krasobruslar-s-koreny-z-valasska !
5. ↑ http://www.readexpress.com/2007/04/fit_cuttingedge_exercises/