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Four! Figure Skaters Tee Up the Quad

VANCOUVER, British Columbia—Singles figure skating is known as the glamor sport of the Winter Olympics. Now it's time to recognize the event's participants for something else: athletic ability that rivals that of the world's most iconic sports stars.

The men's figure-skating concludes with the long program today and with only a narrow difference between the top three competitors. After the short program on Tuesday night, only 0.55 point separated Russian Evgeni Plushenko, who won gold at the 2006 Games, from American Evan Lysacek. Yet on technical grounds, their performances were starkly different.

Evan Lysacek ENLARGE
Evan Lysacek Getty Images

Mr. Plushenko, 27 years old, who came out of retirement last year in order to regain his Olympic title, began his performance with the most athletically challenging move in skating: the quadruple toe loop—known as the quad—followed by a triple toe loop. For that feat, in which skaters jump and rotate completely four times, he earned 14.8 points.

As he left the ice, he gestured as if he was a fencer putting away his foil.

"I believe the quad is the future of skating," he told reporters.

The move, first completed by Kurt Browning in 1988, is so hard few thought it was even possible until a few decades ago, requiring an average hang time of one second and a launch speed of 15 miles per hour.

That's faster than Javier Sotomayor was traveling in 1993 when he set the world record for the high jump and just 6% slower than Michael Jordan was moving when he leapt 15 feet from the basket to dunk a ball in the 1988 National Basketball Association slam-dunk competition, according to John Eric Goff, a physics professor at Virginia's Lynchburg College and author of "Gold Medal Physics."

Mr. Goff's data, assembled for The Wall Street Journal, show that the average quad requires more time in the air than Mr. Jordan needed for his legendary dunk, which took about 0.84 second. Mr. Sotomayor, who cleared 96.5 inches in his record-setting jump, needed 1.15 seconds. Perhaps the most impressive feat Mr. Goff examined was Bob Beamon's record-setting long jump in the 1968 Olympic Games. Mr. Beamon traveled 29.2 feet—a record that stood for 23 years—with a launch speed of 22.2 miles per hour and a hang time of one second.

Former American figure skater Timothy Goebel helped popularize the quad by performing it prolifically during his 14-year career, including the 2002 Games, when he won the bronze medal. During that event, he says his rotations per minute were clocked as high as 946; the average rotations per minute for an NBA player performing a 360-degree dunk is 100. "It's kind of crazy to even think about," Mr. Goebel says.

The quad is a divisive issue in the world of figure skating because if you perform it well, it boosts your score like nothing else. Yet if you do it wrong, it can cost an equally large chunk. That's what happened to Tomas Verner, who attempted the same combination of quad and triple as Mr. Plushenko, but ended up completing only a double toeloop—and only coming in No. 19 in Tuesday's competition.

It has also reignited an old debate in the sport: Which matters more, athleticism or artistry?

Mr. Lysacek and third-ranked Daisuke Takahashi from Japan—who themselves are separated by only 0.05 point—didn't even attempt the quad on Tuesday night. Instead, they were rewarded by judges on the more subjective side of the sport, in which they earn points for their transitions between moves and their interpretation of the music.

Mr. Lysacek argued that the quad wasn't king. "Each step, each spin is equally important." he said. He previously broke his foot training for the quad, and decided it wasn't worth pursuing.

In a news conference after their performance that largely focused on the quad, Mr. Plushenko said it is a sign of athletic advance in figure skating. "Of course we need transitions and steps—harder and harder. But I did triples in 1994," Mr. Plushenko said. All sports need new records, but "I think we stopped."

Mr. Takahashi said "whether or not it is necessary depends on the person." Although he didn't do one Tuesday, he said it was "necessary" for his overall performance.

Tonight, the medals will be awarded after the men perform the longer program, known as a free skate. In it, more of the men are likely to attempt the quad but it could become less of a differentiator, because its overall weight in the program decreases. Still, the competition could hardly be tighter.

Mr. Lysacek said: "I won't take any step in that free skate for granted."

Write to Geoffrey A. Fowler at, Phred Dvorak at and David Biderman at

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