Paul Oberjuerge: Here's (more) Johnny!
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| He skates for the U.S., yet wears an old Soviet Union jacket. |
If you can't get enough of Johnny Weir, and a lot of skate fans can't, we're emptying the notebook here. This includes stuff not going into print in the Wednesday newspaper.
He also went off on a tangent, while moving around before about 50 reporters in the "mixed zone", about how he loves Russia and Russian skating, and how he's learning to speak Russian ... but he was out of my earshot when he said all that stuff.
On how he felt before the race: "I was really calm, actually. Going out to the ice I was walking very slowly, very relaxed."
On his chances of getting a medal on Thursday: "If I skate like this, I deserve a medal."
On whether he will stick a quad jump into his free skate: "I'll decide on Thursday morning. That will be the very last thing, very spur-of-the-moment for me. That’s just the way it has to be. I’m not putting all my eggs in one basket so to speak."
On Evgeni Plushenko's performance: "I missed Plushenko. I was on the bus when he skated. I looked at the leaderboard to see where we were in the running order, and I said `Oh, my God!' Ninety points in one program, it’s wild. It’s wild. I didn’t think anyone would get past the 80s. For him to score 90 is really incredible. ... I saw the replay. Awesome."
What will it take for Plushenko to lose? "If he falls three times maybe, just maybe someone could squeak by by a point or so."
Evaluating his performance Tuesday in the short program: "Not my best. It was calm, collected. Nothing really excessive, no flailing arms or anything. So it wasn’t bad but it’s not good, in my opinion. I’m my own worst critic, So even if something’s great, like the nationals short program, I’ll still pick it apart so that I think it’s terrible and I have to keep doing better.
On the performance of Chinese pairs skater Zhang Dan, who got up from a hard crash to win silver on Monday night: "The whole time I knew I was going to be asked about this. OK, here we go: That girl, I would buy her diamonds. If I could afford them. I have no idea how she got up. It seemed like the type of fall that, you know, could render someone unable to have children. It looked like it hurt that much. Mine (referring to a big crash) wasn’t that bad, and if I had to get up and keep on competing ... I don’t know if I could do it. I have such respect for her for pushing through it and nailing down the silver medal."
On gold-medalists Tatiana Totmianina and Maxim Marinin of Russia: "I have nothing bad to say about Max and Tatiana. There was nothing out of line, no bent fingers or arms or crazy faces. Their short program was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen on the ice. Then the free program was just the same. I’ve never seen somebody that on. Nobody rivals Tatiana and Max."
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