Evan Lysacek is golden!

The night didn’t start off well for the Americans. Jeremy Abbott was already out of contention, but it would have been nice to see him skate well in his long program. Alas, it was not to be. The good news was that after a couple of rough jumps at the beginning, he skated pretty well for the rest of the program.

He was certainly not the only one to fall. The next couple of skaters did well but struggled with at least one jump in their programs.

But the big news of the night was Evan Lysacek. He didn’t have a great warm up and then he skated first after the warm up. The good news was that he left all the mistakes on the warm up ice. He skated a technically and an artistically beautiful program. When it was over, win or lose, you just knew that he knew that he’d done everything that he could to become the first American man since Brian Boitano to win the gold. And he did.

That left Evgeni Plushenko, who came out of retirement to pursue an unprecedented back to back gold, with the silver.

The bronze was given to Japan’s Daisuke Takahashi, the first Japanese man to win an individual figure skating medal.

Johnny Weir ended up in 6th, but I think undeservedly so. He skated a really good program with one little tiny bobble on a spin. More than one skater who finished in front of him made much more major errors. And, yet, Johnny was not rewarded with the scores. Maybe it’s that his program is not quite as demanding, more simple. But this is what really drives me crazy about this new system. I understand and appreciate that a higher level of difficulty should be rewarded, but only IF it is successfully completed. And if you perform a great performance without a major mistake, you should not receive lower scores than someone who makes a major mistake.

But the night belonged to Evan Lysacek. It was so great to see his reaction to finding out the final results. Relief, joy, maybe a tiny bit of disbelief. Congratulations to him. He’s worked hard and really deserves the gold.