SPECIAL SECTION/CANADA'S TEAM/FIGURE SKATING	FEBRUARY 2, 1998 VOL. 151 NO. 4
	His Highness The King Elvis Stojko has won three world titles (but no Olympic gold) by staying true to himself. Is this his year? By MARY JOLLIMORE lvis Stojko has won just about everything a world-champion figure skater could want. Except, in his estimation, one thing: Olympic acceptance. Hard to imagine. The stocky, jocular 25-year-old from Richmond Hill, Ont., is the king of his sport. He has won three world titles: 1994, 1995 and 1997. He's considered Canada's best bet for Olympic gold at Nagano. He's also the country's only prospect for a medal in singles skating at the Games. (For the first time since 1920, no Canadian female qualified for the women's individual event.) Stojko capped 1997 as the Canadian public's choice for athlete of the year, making him more popular than baseball's Larry Walker or auto racing's Jacques Villeneuve. His popularity seems to wane only among Olympic skating judges. As a rookie Olympian at Albertville in 1992, Stojko finished seventh, despite two fault-free programs. In his Lillehammer encore in 1994, 11 months after finishing second at the 1993 Worlds, he had to settle for silver behind the classically schooled Russian Alexei Urmanov. Afterward Stojko declared, "Well, I'm doing something different that the judges apparently aren't ready for." As the world knows, Stojko has always insisted on skating his way. Which, as it happens, is very different from the way many judges think it should be done. His very size and shape are an affront to conventional expectations. He is stocky and muscular, while most male champions are long and lean. He borrows moves from the martial arts, while most of his rivals owe a debt to ballet. He likes to perform to rock 'n' roll, or worse (he skated to the sound track from Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story at the 1994 Games), while most of his rivals favor polished jazz or classical music. In short, however technically spectacular his performance (last year he was the first skater ever to land a quadruple-triple combination), he has suffered in the subjective area of artistic presentation. "In my skating, I've always been ridiculed for doing things a little bit differently or being my own person," he says. Will this be the year that Canada, as well as Stojko, finally ends an Olympic-skating jinx? Three times the country has sent a reigning world champion to the Games--Brian Orser in 1988 and Kurt Browning in 1992 and 1994--only to miss the gold. Stojko, who earned his first world title a month after the Lillehammer Games, is at perhaps the pinnacle of his career. The two skating programs he'll offer in Nagano have been in the works for more than a year. He calls his 2 1/2-min. short program--performed to pulsating Japanese ceremonial taiko drums--"a killer" because of its fast pace and tricky footwork. His 4 1/2-min. free program (to music from the 1996 film The Ghost and the Darkness) is punctuated with powerful jumps and his transcription of martial artistry. He used both programs to kick off 1998 with his fourth Canadian title; judges handed him six perfect-6 scores for his free-skate performance. Stojko took his show on the road last October and won his first two international events with ease. Then, in December at Munich, came a showdown with his two chief Olympic rivals--1996 world champion Todd Eldredge of the U.S. and Ilia Kulik, 1996 world silver medalist, of Russia. (Urmanov is not expected to defend his Olympic title because of an injury.) Stojko's famed quadruple jump let him down. And Kulik, 20, polished off his long program with only one minor flaw. The judges gave gold to Kulik and silver to Stojko. It was the Canadian's first major international loss since 1996. Stojko, however, is not dwelling on the loss or on any possible jinx, just on the importance of being Elvis. "I think skaters can be themselves without fitting a certain mold. It's about being who you are and being true to yourself." Stojko learned to be true to himself in a childhood where the best things didn't come easily. His Hungarian mother Irene fled communism at 19. His Yugoslav father Steve moved to Canada at 21, jobless and knowing only a few words of English. His elder sister Elizabeth and big brother Attila were adolescents by the time little brother Elvis came along. At 2 1/2, Elvis was watching figure skating on television. "I was very interested in the spinning," he says, "and I kept tugging at my parents to let me skate. I started when I was five. When I got on the ice, all I wanted to do was slide and spin and fall and slide and spin and fall." In 1986 Stojko switched to his current coach, Doug Leigh, who guided Brian Orser to a world title in 1987 and to an Olympic silver medal in 1984 and 1988. Stojko thrived on Leigh's no-nonsense tutelage. After a sixth-place finish at the world junior championship in 1989, he vaulted to the senior ranks. In 1990 he won a trip to the world championships, where he finished ninth. His leaps got bigger and bigger. He was the first to land a quadruple-double-jump combination in competition, in 1991, and then the world titles rolled in. Ever since, the world has watched to see what he would try next. The force of his landing has bent a few of Stojko's skate blades out of shape, and his boots needed so much reinforcing that they became clodhoppers. Now he wears a boot with lightweight ballistic nylon, which is used in bulletproof vests, on the outside of the leather. But space-age skates will carry him only so far. The rest comes from within.
time-webmaster@pathfinder.com