MOVING ON UP


Evan Lysacek Takes It to the Next Level

By Susan Wessling

It was an inauspicious start, at best. Had it not been for a youth hockey coach and sibling rivalry, Evan Lysacek might not have ascended to the top of his sport in the United States.

Lysacek, the 2007 U.S. men’s champion and a two-time World bronze medalist, grew up in Chicago, idolizing the NHL’s Blackhawks. When he was 8 years old, he and his older sister received skates for Christmas from their grandmother, a former figure skater who had successfully tried out for Ice Capades.

“I really enjoyed being on the ice. … I gave it my best shot but had no natural ability whatsoever,” Lysacek said. “A hockey coach said, ‘The way to learn is to go into figure skating [lessons] and really learn how to skate, become a strong skater, and then if you still want to play hockey, you can.’”

Group lessons followed. “I was 8½ at that time and my sister was 9, almost 10. We didn’t get along so well at that age. Like brothers and sisters who fought a lot … we were competitive,” he said. “Basically my goal in ice skating class was to beat my older sister, to be better than her.”

Lysacek loved the speed of traveling across the ice. “I would just go and whip around as fast as I could, go about 100 miles an hour around the rink,” he said. “The coach could never catch me. I was kind of a terror student. But I was progressing as I was constantly pushed, because I felt like I had to be better than my sister.”

A figure skating coach saw the young prodigy’s talent and suggested private lessons. Lysacek admits now that at that point he had never followed the sport and had no idea what it entailed. “But I was up for anything,” he said.

By the time he was 10 he had mastered the double jumps and the moves necessary to pass his juvenile test. Entering a regional competition that year, Lysacek skated in a bright blue sweat suit to a roughly cut mix from the soundtrack of “Top Gun.”

He placed second.

He earned a spot at the Junior Olympics, an opportunity he almost passed up for a family vacation. But a judge convinced his parents it was an honor for the young skater to compete at the event. Skating in a modified superhero costume with neon yellow lightning bolts, Lysacek won the competition.

He has come a long way from those days. “From that point to now it has progressed to the point where I have professional music cutting and I am wearing Christian Dior costumes to skate in,” said Lysacek, who turns 22 on June 4. “That gives you a good idea of where I came from. For me skating has always been a sport first and foremost. It has been for fun. It has been about the competitive aspect and me loving to compete and that is it.”

ROLE MODEL

Winning nationals this past January has put Lysacek in a role he relishes: as an ambassador for the sport he loves. “For me [winning the U.S. title] means a lot,” he explained. “It is an opportunity to be a really positive role model for figure skating and kids who want to start figure skating.”

Lysacek said he wants to spread the word about what the sport offers. “It teaches you discipline and perseverance. … It would be a shame if its popularity dwindles. It is so athletic and so competitive, and sometimes those aspects are not highlighted as much as glittery outfits and drama,” he said. “I think we need to do more of telling people, ‘This is a sport.’ We are all out there to win. Maybe we are not ‘playing’ it necessarily, but it is very competitive and it is very mentally tough.”

The 2007 U.S. men’s champion’s rise through the ranks was not meteoric. He is the first one to admit that fact. “I didn’t burst onto the scene,” he said. “I had a gradual progression. One year at nationals I was fifth then third then second and then first.”

His career took off in 2003 after he graduated from high school and his parents gave him a choice: either go away to school or train. “Either way I had to be independent,” Lysacek said. “I think them forcing me to do that [turned out] to be one of the most amazing experiences.”

Lysacek went to California for a tryout with Frank Carroll and immediately wanted to relocate to Los Angeles. “But he had a lot of world-class skaters and at that time I was by no means a senior world-class competitor,” Lysacek remembered. “Basically he said, ‘You are not a priority right now but I would love to work with you.’”

Lysacek told Carroll his goal was to make the U.S. Olympic Team in 2006. “That was only two skating seasons away. I asked him if he thought it was feasible,” Lysacek recalled. “Otherwise, if he didn’t believe in me, who would?”

Carroll agreed that the teenager had the potential to meet his goal. Four times a week, for 20 minutes, Carroll worked with Lysacek. On his own, Lysacek worked to perfect the skills his coach taught him during their workouts.

“Evan has a work ethic that everyone should have,” Carroll said. “He works hard and doesn’t waste any time. He’s dedicated and disciplined. When he is on the ice there is no fooling around. It’s a pleasure to have people like that and it’s a great return of investment on my energy and hard work.”

Under Carroll’s tutelage, Lysacek made immediate progress. “I went out with a triple Axel for the first time [that season] and basically won everything on the junior level,” Lysacek said. “Then I was able to go to my first senior [international] championship, which was Four Continents.” He won a bronze medal at the event.  

That season also marked a change in his relationship with Carroll, who had stopped working with several other elite skaters. Carroll and Lysacek mapped out their strategy for the next two seasons. If Lysacek wanted to make it to the 2006 Olympic Games, making the 2005 U.S. World Team was the immediate goal. “We were working together much more and I just listened,” Lysacek said. “We had developed this great working relationship and I went out and made the World team. We were really happy about that.”

Carroll instructed Lysacek, who was then 19, to learn everything he could from that experience. “So I went to Worlds with that mentality of wanting to better my own career and to use the [experience] as a great tool. I think that mentality helped me to be relaxed enough to win a medal [the bronze] that year,” Lysacek said.

That result also shaped Lysacek’s Olympic aspirations. “Instead of us thinking that hopefully I would make the Olympic team,” he said, “it was, ‘Okay, I think I can have a top-10 finish, maybe even be on the podium, who knows?’”

THE WORLD’S BIGGEST STAGE 

The Olympic season saw Lysacek win two silver Grand Prix Series medals, one at Skate America and the other at NHK Trophy. He qualified for the Grand Prix Final but withdrew due to injury. He placed second at the U.S. Championships, punching his ticket to Torino to compete at the 2006 Olympic Winter Games.

Having won a World medal in 2005, Lysacek felt the pressure going into the Games. “I think it was unreasonable for me to think as a 20-year-old, first-time Olympian who had only really been a senior for a year and a half, that I would go and win a medal or even win the Olympics,” he said. “It is such a huge experience that you almost have to do it once to know what to expect.”

The experience, at times, was overwhelming. “I think it is natural for any athlete to go in and when you are going to step up to the ice for your short program say, ‘Oh my God, it is the Olympics,’” he said.

Lysacek was sick in Torino, suffering from a bacterial infection. His short program was a disaster and left him buried in 10th place, 12 points behind the second- and third-place finishers and 21 points behind the leader. “I spent the day between the short and the long [programs] in the medical clinic on a table … trying to get an IV in me. I was thinking, ‘No matter what, you are going to do this.’ I didn’t care if I went out and fell.”

He rallied to finish third in the free skate and fourth overall. “My mentality my whole life has been to give everything my absolute 100 percent best shot. So that is what I did and lucky for me that it turned out the way it did,” he said. “I had a great performance and I really felt the life of the Olympics.”

The season ended on a high note with a second straight World bronze medal.

Lysacek went into the 2006-07 season publicly stating his goal was to win nationals. “When I got to nationals, there was a lot of energy — [both] positive and negative. I think people wanted to make something negative about the rivalry between Johnny [Weir, the defending and three-time champion] and I. … Most of the time the message that was coming across was that it was a negative rivalry. I did my best to ignore that and push all the negatives away and stick with the positives: It is a great competition. It is a great rivalry. We are both good. There is pressure on both of us. We were less than a point apart after the short program.”

Lysacek won the title by a huge margin. He beat the second-place finisher, Ryan Bradley, by nearly 30 points. Weir ended up in third.

Nationals were noteworthy for another reason as Lysacek landed a clean quad toe in his long program. He said watching Tiger Woods and Serena Williams on television while in Spokane helped him with his focus. “In the short program I had so much emotion because I wanted so badly to do a great short. Then I saw these elite athletes and I saw how they got in their zone and they had no emotion,” Lysacek said. “They knew they were going to do it, they executed it and they did it.

“That was the mentality I took with me to the arena that night. … I did the quad, no emotion. I looked up and said, ‘Step one out of the way.’ With each jump I clicked them off one by one, with no emotion whatsoever, no celebration. I was just calm and in the zone. A lot of things changed for me [that night].”

Carroll said he never doubted for a minute that Lysacek would land the quad. “It’s one of his best jumps,” the veteran coach said. “He is very strong on the toe jumps and is very tight in the air. I don’t think the quad is that difficult for Evan. There was no doubt about ‘will he or won’t he,’ it was in the program.”

After winning Four Continents, and landing a slightly two-footed quadruple toe loop-triple toe loop combination in his long program, Lysacek went into Worlds with the goal of landing quads in both his short and free programs. This time he wasn’t successful and placed fifth overall. “I knew it was a risk,” he said. “This season, to me, was about going to nationals and winning. I went to the World Championships and … I wanted to improve something about my skating, and playing it safe and doing the same old triple Lutz-triple toe is not the way to take that next step toward becoming an Olympic champion.”

Lysacek told IFS in early March that his three major goals are to win nationals, Worlds and the Olympics. “I feel like I am on my way. Step by step I am getting there. … Hopefully I will continue improving and progressing and accomplish my goals,” he said. “I am planning on being in the sport until I am totally satisfied and have accomplished my goals.”

LIFE IN HOLLYWOOD

Lysacek recently moved into a home in the Hollywood Hills in a star-studded neighborhood. “It is really funny to walk around the neighborhood.

Sasha [Cohen] was renting my guest house for a while and we would go on hikes every single day,” he said. “Paris Hilton is one of my neighbors and there are always paparazzi outside of her house.”

The 2007 U.S. champion takes advantage of the L.A. nightlife. “I love to go out with my friends. … I can’t cook at all so it gives me the chance to go out to all these amazing restaurants,” he said.

Lysacek also enjoys spending time with girlfriend Tanith Belbin, the 2006 Olympic silver medalist in ice dance with Ben Agosto. “Tanith is amazing,” Lysacek said. “She loves coming to L.A. and I take her to all the hip spots.”

As elite athletes, the two have much in common. “We probably spend two hours on the phone a day. We have a lot to talk about. We are both going through the same sort of stuff and we are helping each other through problems. The life of an athlete is really tough, really, really tough,” Lysacek said. “It is basically pressure-packed. You have to keep performing. You have to keep improving. It is more, more, more.

“To have someone who knows what you are going through and can help you deal with the pressures of life is awesome. I am really lucky to have her, not to mention we have tons of fun together.”

Lysacek said his ultimate day off the ice would start with a round of golf and end on the beach. And what does he consider the ultimate competition experience? “Nationals is pretty high up there,” he said. “Everything pretty much went right. But I think I work really hard on the ice. I train well. So I always feel really great about going to a competition and skating my best, not leaving anything on the table.”

Lysacek also keeps things in perspective. “It is only a sport. It is something I care very much about, something I work very hard for and I am very focused when I am doing it. But at the end of the day, I have to live my life above everything else. That comes first,” he said. “So I think that having the mentality of treating it like a sport, having good sportsmanship and trying my best has really given me a lot of success in my career."