Costas Indulges in Fruitless Mining

There’s been a little controversy surrounding Evan Lysacek’s gold medal yesterday.  Silver medalist Yevgeny Plushenko responded with a little wonder that he didn’t win. He complained that the new scoring system didn’t fairly account for the quad axel that he can land, but Lysecek can’t. 

Bob Costas sat down with Lysacek to find out what his reaction was and asked some very leading questions.  It seems to me that Costas really wanted Lysacek to make ugly comments about Plushenko.  Maybe the comments were sour grapes on Plushenko’s part, but you’d never know it from Evan’s comments.  He was incredibly gracious and well spoken. He had nothing but good things to say about his Russian counterpart and lauded him for coming out of retirement and getting silver after so much time off.

Later in the evening, Scott Hamilton and Dick Button joined in the interview and expressed their opinion that Evan truly earned the gold.  Hamilton said Evan was the best conditioned athlete, and Button said the program was the “total package” and “spiffy to see.” 

Generally, I like Bob Costas.  He’s smart, he has great interview skills, and he researches the sports he comments on.  But I thought he was trying to unnecessarily stir the pot on this one.  I’m not sorry  the interview didn’t create a story for him. It’s nice to see that Evan is not only a great skater, but a classy gentleman.