By Sandra Loosemore
CBS SportsLine Figure Skating Writer
Nov. 2, 1998

DETROIT -- Thank goodness for the men.

A deep men's field and strong technical performances by the top four finishers were the only things that saved this year's edition of Skate America -- the first

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major international competition of the season for Olympic-eligible skaters -- from being a total snooze.

The ladies' event, and indeed the whole competition, was overshadowed by the power struggle between the International Skating Union and the United States Figure Skating Association, which prevented world champion Michelle Kwan from competing. Five-time U.S. champion Todd Eldredge, who had planned to skate in the exhibition following the competition, was also banned.

FANS, JOURNALISTS, AND SKATERS ALIKE were left scratching their heads over the controversy. Here were two of the best skaters in the business who wanted to participate in a sanctioned event staged by their own national skating federation in their own country. How was it in the best interest of the sport for the ISU to threaten them with loss of eligibility for doing so?

Without Kwan, the remaining ladies in the event stumbled their way through the competition without a single clean performance in either the short or long

Despite using a recycled program, Maria Butyrskaya of Russia won the ladies' singles title at Skate America. (AP)

programs. Moreover, many of these skaters competed with recycled programs from previous years, so that there was not even new choreography to hold one's interest.

Nicole Bobek, for example, showed up with a free program set to music from Evita that she has been using in various incarnations since 1995, while Maria Butyrskaya and Angela Nikodinov also recycled their programs from last season.

The splat-fest in the pairs event was almost as bad as that in the ladies' singles, and the ice dance competition was notable only for setting new standards of tastelessness in terms of some of the lifts, program themes, and costumes.

It's not surprising that figure skating isn't taken more seriously as a sport when some of the competitors wear costumes that apparently consist entirely of flesh-colored Lycra with a few strategically placed patches of beads and sequins, compete in masks or vampire makeup, or skate around with the man holding the woman upside down with her legs wrapped around his neck.

FORTUNATELY, THE MEN'S SINGLES competition provided the antidote for all that.

The men's field at Skate America was stronger than is likely to be seen at any event this season until the World Championships, which will be held March 20-28 in Helsinki, Finland. Skate America featured four of the top five competitors in the world: three-time world champion Elvis Stojko, 1994 Olympic champion Alexei Urmanov, current world champion Alexei Yagudin and rising American star Michael Weiss. Only Evgeny Plushenko, last season's bronze medalist at the world championships, was missing.

Much of the interest in this competition focused on the matchup between Stojko and Urmanov, who have been rivals on the ice for many years but are now both on the mend from serious groin injuries.

Urmanov's injury occurred at the 1997 World Championships. It was a particularly crushing blow because it came just when he was skating better than at any time since the 1994 Lillehammer Olympic Games -- a time when he was gaining new respect as a competitor after less-than-stellar results in the intervening years. Because he re-injured himself by attempting to resume training before he was fully healed, Urmanov missed all of last season, and lost his chance to defend his Olympic title in Nagano. Missing an entire season cost Urmanov his livelihood as well as his place in the Russian men's hierarchy.

Stojko's injury occurred in Nagano, and although he gritted his way through the competition to a second successive silver medal, his dreams of Olympic gold were also dashed. After Nagano, Stojko spent four and a half months off the ice, and another month skating without being able to do jumps.

THIS WAS THE LEGACY that both men brought to Skate America. In Urmanov's case, it was evident in the loss of some of the confidence and panache in his manner compared to two seasons ago. It's not surprising that he has begun to doubt himself when reporters keep suggesting he is too old to make a comeback -- although, as he pointed out, he is actually younger than Stojko.

For his part, Stojko appeared to be somewhat out of condition at Skate America, and he lacked the consistency in his jumps that comes from countless repetitions in practice. He was clearly tiring by the end of his free skate and began making mistakes on the jumps.

Asked about his fitness for competition, Stojko said: "On a range of 1 to 10, it's about a 6." Stojko added that his goal is to be back in peak condition by the world championships.

Meanwhile, 18-year-old Yagudin, who surprised many people last spring by beating out Todd Eldredge for the World Championships gold, confirmed that his victory there was no fluke. Yagudin turned in two technically superior performances at Skate America to defeat an even stronger field.

Yagudin's jumps were of awesome quality -- high and fast, and completely consistent throughout the competition. He actually included more triple jumps in his program than the rules allow -- a total of nine, including two triple axels, two triple flips, and two triple-toe loops. He later explained that he simply lost track of how many jumps he had done, and thought only that "I have to jump something more."

WEISS ALSO TURNED IN A strong skate, with eight triples and a creditable attempt at a quadruple toe loop, establishing himself for the first time as a genuine contender instead of a wanna-be.

"This is like the World Championships," Weiss said. "I knew this was not only going to be the first competition of the year, but the toughest."

Yagudin also commented on the depth of the field. "I think Skate America is the hardest part of the Grand Prix series," the teen-ager said.

If there was a disappointment in this competition, it was that the programs and choreography these men performed were not particularly original or well-constructed.

Weiss chose to skate a tedious long program to music from the movie Mulan, which seemed to be a major step in the wrong direction given the creativity of his work in previous years. Meanwhile, Stojko's free-skating program, using music from the soundtracks of Merlin and Iron Will, was also bland and uncreative, and virtually indistinguishable from any of the other equally bland movie-theme programs he has skated in the past several years.

Although Yagudin's Lawrence of Arabia was more successful from an artistic point of view, the program was seriously flawed in its construction. There was far too much posing directly in front of the judges and not enough coverage of the entire ice surface -- which is supposed to be one of the criteria considered in the presentation mark. That problem might not have been apparent to the judges, who rewarded Yagudin with 5.9s for presentation, but it was certainly evident to spectators sitting on the other three sides of the ice.

Urmanov's stylized tango program was the class of the bunch, in many ways. If Urmanov continues his comeback by skating this program with a little more security and pizzazz, it could become one of the more memorable programs of the season, even if the judges don't actually reward him for it.