Figure skating. Today, the powerhouse of Russian figure skating is the women. It is they who have invariably won gold medals at the last three Olympic Games and dominated all international competitions until Russia was excluded. But at the turn of the century, things were very different in Russian figure skating. From the late 1990s through the first two years of the new century, the rivalry between two Russian figure skaters, Alexei Yagudin and Evgeni Plushenko, was thunderous. The two fought for many years, not shying away from caustic remarks, open delight at each other’s falls, and even underhanded tactics. The peak of their confrontation was the 2002 Olympic Games in Salt Lake City, USA.
After his victory at the 1998 Nagano Olympics, Ilya Kulik turned professional. Alexei Yagudin then rose to first place in the world rankings. His disappointing finish in Nagano (fifth place) had a galvanizing effect on his results, producing three consecutive World Championship victories (1998, 1999, 2000). However, the pre-Olympic 2001 World Championship in Vancouver, Canada went to Plushenko. The situation heading into Salt Lake City was therefore unsettled, which only added fuel to the fire.
The history of hostility between Yagudin and Plushenko had begun long before these events. Who was right and who was wrong, where the truth ends and fiction begins, only Alexei and Evgeni know. What is certain is that the intensity of their enmity, both sporting and personal, drove Yagudin first to leave his coach Alexei Mishin for Tatyana Tarasova, and then to prepare for the 2002 Olympics separately from the rest of the Russian team. It all had one goal: to see Plushenko as little as possible.
Photo source: personal archive of Evgeni Plushenko
After arriving in Salt Lake City, Yagudin again tried to minimize contact with Plushenko. In the Olympic village, the second bed in Evgeni’s room was vacant, and Yagudin himself spent that week sharing a room with Maxim Marinin. Alexei went out of his way to avoid his main rival.
Before the competition, experts agreed that if Plushenko skated his programs cleanly, he would be the one standing on the top step of the podium. But Yagudin had his celebrated “Winter” in his arsenal. The program is not packed with an extraordinary number of difficult jumps, yet its musicality, choreography, and beauty captivate figure skating fans to this day. On February 12, 2002, he delivered a magnificent short program and received a standing ovation from the arena that lasted several minutes.
Alexei received excellent marks from the judges. Then Evgeni Plushenko stepped onto the ice. On his very first jump, his signature quadruple toe loop, Plushenko fell and dropped to fourth place, behind not only Yagudin but also the American Timothy Goebel and Japan’s Takeshi Honda.
“When Plushenko fell in the short program, I leapt to my feet and shouted: ‘Yes!’ I would not have thought it could make me so happy, but at that point there was too much at stake. In that moment I could not, and did not want to, hide my joy. In those seconds I understood that I was going to become Olympic champion,” Yagudin would later say.
Later, Plushenko and Alexei Mishin accused psychologist Rudolf Zagainov, a member of Yagudin’s team, of using hypnosis.
“I knew the quadruple toe loop like the back of my hand. And then, as I was approaching the jump, I suddenly noticed Zagainov’s silhouette and met his heavy gaze. I pushed off hard and took flight smoothly, but then something inexplicable happened. It was as if a voice was commanding me: ‘Go down and land!’ And I obeyed, even though it was far too early. It was as if some incomprehensible force was pulling me down,” Plushenko would later say.
The men’s singles free skate was scheduled for February 14. By tradition, the honor of skating last goes to the leader after the short program, Alexei Yagudin. He already knew that Plushenko had skated at an extremely high level and had taken the lead among those who had already skated. However, the gap Yagudin had built in the short program could only be closed if he started making mistakes.
Shortly before taking the ice, Alexei asked Tatyana Tarasova about the difficulty level of his program. Yagudin was weighing whether to attempt two quadruple jumps or play it safe and do only the minimum required to secure victory. Tatiana Anatolyevna, the seasoned coach that she was, left the decision entirely to her athlete. In the end, Alexei landed both quadruple jumps and once again received a thunderous ovation from the stands.
After Plushenko’s skate, it appeared he might score the most points in the free program, but Yagudin settled the matter in his own favor, receiving remarkable marks from the judges.
Less than a month after the Salt Lake City Olympics, Alexei Yagudin became World Champion for the fourth and final time in his career and retired from competitive skating as the king of figure skating. Evgeni Plushenko, meanwhile, continued alongside Alexei Mishin to scale new heights, going on to become a two-time Olympic champion (gold in the individual event at Turin 2006, and a team gold at Sochi 2014), as well as a silver medalist at the 2010 Games in Vancouver.
Both Yagudin and Plushenko wrote memoirs at the end of their careers in which they spoke about each other at length. In recent years, each has tried to speak about the other with restraint and sometimes even in a positive light. Their confrontation was a clash of opposites. But this “sporting war” pushed figure skating to a new level and gave Russia two Olympic champions.
