THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY: A Todd Eldredge 1995-96 Season Retrospective

As a Todd Eldredge fan, I can’t exactly say that I was looking forward to the 1996 World Championships in Edmonton. On the contrary, I tended to view the upcoming event as something to get through in order to reach an end to what had been an agonizing season.

Up to that point, it had definitely not been the best of seasons for Todd or for his fans. I had had a sense of foreboding the previous summer, when I first heard the announcement of his participation in the Nutcracker tour, scheduled to take up an entire month just before Nationals. Then came news of the projected Collins Winter Tour and the Centennial on Ice competition which, combined with the new Champions Series final, would pretty much take up most of the time between Nationals and Worlds. Then, prior to Nutcracker and right after a Collins Spring Tour which had kept him fully engaged until mid-July, there had followed the Too Hot to Skate show and the International Team competition, followed in late August by a series of shows in Sun Valley; not to mention commitments to do the Halloween on Ice shows in October and the Skates of Gold III and Fall Pro-Am events in November (with Skate America and Nation’s Cup somehow sandwiched in between the shows). By the time he was announced as a last minute replacement for Aleksei Urmanov at Best of the Best in September (a situation that happened again in October when he replaced Philippe Candeloro at Starlight Challenge), I had come to the conclusion that "No" was a word that had been permanently eliminated from Todd’s vocabulary. I also wondered when on earth amid all these commitments he was ever going to find sufficient time to train for the important competitions of the new season.

The Best of the Best event, which Todd was basically rushed into with insufficient preparation, was a disaster which I tried very hard not to see as an omen of things to come. And in spite of a Skate America victory that featured a free skate performance widely touted as the skate of his life up to that time, my sense of foreboding was not in the least eased. In contrast to the previous year’s Skate America where Gettysburg debuted as a largely finished product, with Todd left free for the rest of the season to concentrate strictly on refining and selling it, the new Chess program was still ragged at its debut and nowhere near to being a finished product. In addition to elements of choreography still in process, it was to include a jump combination that Todd had yet to remaster - the triple lutz/triple toe - a combination he’d been able to do at least back in 1990, but had since lost. Failing its reacquisition, he would have to fall back on the triple flip/triple toe - a situation that would then require substantial changes in the choreography as the entry to the flip in the program currently left no room for a combination. Thus, although he was able to win Skate America with a flawless performance that included eight triple jumps, there was still at that point only one triple-triple combination in the program and he would definitely need two if he was to stand a serious chance of winning the World Championship. But with all his upcoming commitments, I was left to wonder exactly when he’d have time both to finish the program and to remaster an old skill while at the same time not losing the skills he already had.

Nation’s Cup was the first sign that things were seriously starting to unravel. The day after the Skate America victory, Todd raced off to New York and the Starlight Challenge; a week later he was still in New York attending Ice Wars (where his coach Richard Callaghan was functioning as a judge); exactly one week after that he was in Albany doing the Skates of Gold III show with the other reigning U.S. National Champions. Nation’s Cup was scheduled to begin exactly 10 days after Skates of Gold. Afterwards, Richard was to admit that they arrived later in Germany than they would have liked (and would usually have done). Not surprisingly, Todd arrived tired and not really up for the competition. The result was a tired short program, a lackluster freeskate performance with an uncharacteristic doubling of jumps (Todd will usually risk a fall rather than double a jump), and a third place finish in the competition. For me, watching this performance was upsetting enough; but more upsetting still (even if also not surprising) was to see that the Chess program had not changed one iota since Skate America. One month later and there was still no evidence that the program was anywhere near to completion.

The day after watching the Nation’s Cup debacle on television, I flew to Philadelphia to attend the Fall Pro-Am Skating Challenge. Meanwhile, Todd flew straight from Germany to Philadelphia and if he was tired when arrived in Germany, he was exhausted by the time he reached Philadelphia. He was also not in the best shape emotionally. It had finally dawned on him that he had committed himself to more than he could comfortably digest and in fact he had recently tried to extricate himself from the Nutcracker tour but was being held to the contract he’d signed. And, to make matters worse (if that was possible), he and Nicole Bobek, his training partner and projected Nutcracker co-star, weren’t getting along - from what I could observe they were barely on speaking terms (and this was about 10 days before Nicole’s leaving Richard for a new coach). What ensued were two of the most depressing days I’ve ever spent.

It is a blessing for all concerned that when this event was televised, ABC did not show his short program performance. I don’t think I’ve seen a Todd performance that disastrous at least since the 1992 Olympic free skate. Skating once again to Swing Kids, the fall on the opening triple axel combination wasn’t just a fall, it was more like a horizontal splat, with Todd winding up flat on his back on the ice. Needless to say, this was not the kind of fall from which one recovers quickly. And indeed, it took him awhile to get back into the program and when he did the result was a doubled triple lutz attempt. He was able to rally considerably for the artistic program the following night with a very good, if not great, performance of Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word, but not enough to prevent his finishing last among the men and in 8th place of all the competitors (he was even outscored by Nicole and by a Mark Mitchell limited by injury to triple toe jumps). The only good if, under the circumstances, fairly ironic, news was the appearance in the Sorry Seems performance of a triple lutz/double toe combination - not very well done, but evidence that he was at least still trying to work on that lost triple/triple combo. As I left Philadelphia I was acutely conscious that Todd was both a mess and in a mess and, considering that two days after he left Philadelphia he was scheduled to open the 30 city Nutcracker tour in California, at that point I couldn’t help but think it would be a major miracle if he even made the World team at the upcoming Nationals, never mind successfully defend his National title.

I caught two performances of Nutcracker on Ice (at the Meadowlands in New Jersey and again in Fairfax, Virginia) and I can’t say I was overwhelmed either by the show or by Todd’s participation in it. At the Meadowlands, he looked tired and his performance was decidedly off (even his spins were off!) and although he performed better in Fairfax, he still looked tired.

When in mid-December I heard a rumor that he had scrapped Chess in favor of a new long program, I flat-out refused to believe it. I felt he was in enough trouble already without abandoning a perfectly good and potentially great (if half finished) program and starting all over again from scratch (with even less time to get it ready than he had before). Two days before I left for San Jose I received confirmation of the rumor, along with the news that he’d also scrapped the King and I short program to go back to Swing Kids - a move I thought probably wise in view of Swing Kids’ greater technical difficulty, difficulty he’d need to be really competitive with some of the other short programs being unveiled by the competition.

I got my first look at the new First Knight program during the first practice session in San Jose and what I saw nearly sent me into shock. Not that I didn’t like it or didn’t think it had enormous potential. But what stunned me was the realization that it was the technically most difficult freeskate program Todd had ever attempted. Sports Illustrated later claimed it was the most difficult program ever attempted by an American man in World competition - I don’t know about that, but I certainly did know it was the most difficult program Todd had ever attempted - and, ironically, he was attempting to do it at the very time he’d managed through lack of training to lose the technical expertise to be able to pull it off. But there it was - he was to do both triple-triple combinations virtually back-to-back, to be followed almost immediately by the triple lutz. He seemed to have given up on the triple lutz/triple toe; the triple flip/triple toe was firmly in place in this new program. However, the problem was that during the course of the season he’d also lost the ability to do that combination (even the triple flip/double toe had become very iffy). And the triple axel/triple toe, while still there, was shaky at best. During the course of 8 practice sessions in San Jose, I don’t think I saw him land more than 5 triple-triples, all of them ta/tts and none of them landed during a program run-through. I couldn’t help but be struck by the contrast between last year’s Nationals practice sessions and those of this year. Actually, the First Knight run-throughs went fairly well (even without any triple-triples) as Todd concentrated mightily on remembering the new program; it was the short program run-throughs that suffered. Not until the third and final short program practice session did I see a clean (as opposed to a fairly disastrous) Swing Kids run-through and I began to wonder if Todd was going to be the victim of what I call the Boitano Olympic Syndrome - that is, concentrating so heavily on the long program during practices that the short gets blown in the actual competition.

As it turned out, the short program presented no problem; the disaster was the freeskate. To say merely that Todd had an off-night would be an understatement. The intention, of course, was to begin the performance with a triple axel/triple toe; then when the axel was overrotated, making any kind of combination impossible, the second triple axel should have been converted into a combination jump (there was never any intention to add a double toe to the flip - at that point in time the flip combination was far too unreliable for him to risk it). However, by the time the second axel came up, he was apparently so busy focusing on remembering the new program that he forgot to add the second jump until it was too late - by the time he remembered, he’d already come out of the axel and had to do a turn before tacking on the double toe - thus executing a sequential rather than a combination jump and eliminating one of the triple axels from counting since neither was part of a combination. The last chance for a triple/double combination came at the end of the program, with the double toe/triple toe he usually pulls out to compensate for an earlier missed triple (or two). This is a combination he can usually do in his sleep (its been years since I’ve seen him miss it); but on this night the foot slipped and the triple turned into a double. Total end triple tally? Five, none in combination. To find an example of a Todd freeskate that bad you would have to look back at least as far as the freeskate at 1993 Nationals (and even that performance began with a gorgeous triple axel/triple toe - it was just all downhill from there). I’m not sure how far you’d have to go back to find another competitive freeskate without even one triple/double combination (1992 Olympics, maybe?) Contrast this with last season when the freeskate in all six major competitions (the 2 internationals, the 2 pro-ams, Nationals and Worlds) contained at least one triple-triple and one (or more) triple doubles and the triple tally averaged seven (exceptions - Skate America with 6 and NHK with 8). Even so, a less than stellar Todd performance is frequently better than much of the competition and he still would have been able to squeak out a win - had Rudy Galindo not chosen that particular night to be brilliant.

At least my November fears had not been realized. Todd did make the World Team. And the Nationals loss did prompt him to withdraw from the Winter Tour (Tom Collins mercifully not holding him to a contract as the Nutcracker producers had) and from the Centennial on Ice competition. At long last he had something he’d not had in a very long time - a whole uninterrupted month at home - training. I only hoped it wouldn’t prove to be too little, too late.

I looked forward to the Champions Series Final with quite a bit of optimism. I by no means expected him to win the thing, but I certainly expected to see some sign that the month of training had really paid off. Instead, what I saw was another 5 triple only performance with Todd apparently still so focused on remembering the program that he was even less successful in selling it to the audience and the judges than he had been at Nationals. It was not all bad news, however. I saw substantial choreographic changes and refinements that led me to believe that the program was now finished, finally leaving him free to start concentrating on the selling aspect. And at least this performance did include three triple/double combinations - including a nicely executed triple flip/double toe, indicating that he had regained this necessary step to reacquiring the tf/tt combination. Of course, one can only judge so much from a television performance and without being able to see any practice sessions, but I was still very much afraid that the recent intensive training was too late and that Todd’s only hope of a top five finish at Worlds (never mind the podium!) was if the competition all helped out by falling on their heads.

My first glimpse of Todd in Edmonton was not until his very first practice session, on the Friday afternoon prior to the competition. For the dedicated men’s practice session junkie, pre-qualifying practice session attendance at Worlds entails sitting through 10 uninterrupted hours of practice. For this particular competition, the guys were divided into 6 groups of approximately 7 guys each; on Friday the groups started practicing in the Agricom (the practice rink) at 2 pm, with the final group ending at approximately 7:25 pm; at 7:30 pm, the first group took the ice again, this time in the Coliseum, with the final group ending their practice at approximately 11:50 pm. That day Todd was in the last of the groups to take the ice, which meant watching 4 1/2 hours of practice while waiting for him to appear. Not all of the top men (those not needing to qualify) were as yet in Edmonton. Other than Todd, only Ilia Kulik and Aleksei Urmanov were in attendance (Viacheslav Zagorodniuk was in town, but practicing elsewhere); Elvis Stojko, Phillipe Candeloro, Eric Millot and Steven Cousins didn’t put in an appearance until Sunday. While waiting for Todd, I couldn’t help but be impressed with how good both Ilia and Aleksei looked on the ice. Between them, I saw more triple-triples than I could keep up with, and I concluded that neither one of these fellows was likely to oblige us by falling on his head during the competition. Finally, it was Todd’s turn and a chance for me to see how both he and First Knight were looking. The First Knight run-through was not horribly encouraging - still a non-seller and the performance itself flawed in the extreme. However, what I observed before and after the run-through definitely had me sitting up, taking notice and finally mentally jumping up and down. In the course of that single 45 minute practice session he landed a total of 5 triple-triples (as many as he had landed in all 8 San Jose practice sessions combined). There were three perfectly executed ta/tts, one tf/tt (very shaky, but landed - it was coming back!) and - at the very end of the session, a perfectly executed triple lutz/triple toe. Sight of this last feat had me convinced I had to be hallucinating - so long had I fantasized his doing this combination (even back in the days when he supposedly had it, I never saw it) that I was convinced my imagination was on overdrive. When the session ended and it was time to switch buildings, I lost no time pouncing on Richard for confirmation (in case I had been hallucinating, I didn’t want to ask Todd). After explaining exactly what I meant by my excited "Did I just see what I thought I saw?", Richard said Yes, prompting me to squeak "When did this happen?" With Richard’s answer of "About a month or so ago. He’s been landing them consistently in practice for weeks now" only age and dignity kept me from turning cartwheels right on the spot. I then learned that the game plan was to keep the tl/tt in reserve and fall back on it if needed in the program (in other words, if either the ta/tt or the tf/tt failed to come off, then a triple toe would be tacked on to what would otherwise be a single triple lutz). Richard went on to say he was hoping they’d be able to pull off something worthwhile in the competition, and he also hastened to assure me that whatever happened in Edmonton, they were going to do everything they could to get Todd "back on track" next season. After this conversation, I felt better about Todd’s future than I had in some time. I was even beginning to think a top 5 finish (if not the podium) might be a possibility after all and without the help of widespread competitor head-falling.

A lot of the men (including Ilia and Aleksei) chose to skip the Friday night practice session, especially those with the later sessions. But not Todd, whose attendance was even more impressive considering that his group was not scheduled to take the ice until 11:15 pm. In fact, he was the first on the ice and the last to leave it. This one was a short program practice session and I was treated not only to the sight of a flawless run-through (complete with triple axel/triple toe) but also to four additional triple-triple executions (including a stronger looking tf/tt and yet another perfect triple lutz/triple toe). As I returned to my hotel, I was starting to think maybe the podium wasn’t beyond Todd’s reach after all.

Saturday meant 10 more hours of men’s practices, scheduled to begin at 6 am with freeskate sessions in the Coliseum and to end at about 3:15 pm with short program sessions in the Agricom. As no one I really felt I had to see was among the first couple of groups scheduled to hit the ice, I elected for a bit more sleep that morning but still managed to be ensconced in the Coliseum by around 7:30, a good two hours prior to Todd’s session. On this occasion, the First Knight run-through managed to be even more disastrous than the one the day before, featuring as it did a really bizarre fall on the triple loop sequence (he had trouble with that sequence all week and it was finally dropped in favor of a single triple loop - it had been a favorite element of mine, a very nice touch, but not really needed) as well as a fall-out on the second triple axel. But as the session also featured no less than six nicely executed triple-triples (fairly evenly divided among the three varieties), I was by no means discouraged. It was still early in the week. And the afternoon practice featured not only multiple triple-triple landings, but another flawless Swing Kids run-through.

Men’s qualifying took place on Sunday, followed immediately by two freeskate practice sessions for the eight guys (including Todd) who hadn’t had to qualify. The qualifying sessions had been very well attended, and it seemed the vast majority of people who had done the attending stayed over to see the practice sessions (not surprisingly, considering that it would mark Elvis’ first appearance on the ice that week and this initial appearance had been widely advertised by the local media). This led to the strangest practice session I’ve ever attended, as I had never seen one with 16,000 spectators, nor experienced one that featured flowers raining down on the ice following a run-through! But then I had also never before attended a competition in Canada, where skating is the national passion. There were 4 guys in each of the sessions and it was Todd’s fate (along with Eric Millot) to be assigned to the same session as Elvis and Phillipe, as well as to be the last of the four to do his program run-through. Basically, while Elvis and Philippe tried to outdo each other vying for audience attention, Todd and Eric just went about their business, trying to practice amid all the antics, the noise and the flowers.

Elvis was the first to do his run-through and he skated it brilliantly to a standing ovation and a rain of flowers. Philippe followed with a performance that was greeted almost as enthusiastically and ended with another floral shower. As Eric proceeded to follow suit and wow the crowd, I found myself getting increasingly nervous, remembering how disastrous Todd’s First Knight run-throughs had been over the previous two days and praying that his performance this afternoon would not end up being a disappointing anticlimax to what had gone before. Well, I needn’t have worried. I don’t know whether it was the crowd, the adrenalin, the rivalry or what it was, but Todd proceeded for the very first time to sell the program to the max, in the process skating a flawless seven-triple performance that featured three triple/double combinations. The result was a standing ovation, another flower shower, a happy and gratified Todd, and a totally delirious Fran.

By the time the competition began on Wednesday I was in a definite state of cautious optimism. I was quite pleased with a skate order position relatively late that would have him skating after most of the competition, yet before Elvis. It turned out to be one of the best men’s short program competitions I’ve ever seen, as one flawless performance seemed to succeed another, with most of the guys skating well and several of them (Cornel Gheorghe and Steven Cousins, in particular) having the skate of their lives. However, as the evening progressed, Ilia Kulik continued to remain the only guy to pull off a triple axel/triple toe combination, and it occurred to me that with so many flawless triple axel/double toe performances (and with Elvis likely to do the ta/tt), Todd’s only hope of finishing the short program in the top 3 was to do the ta/tt. But by that point, having seen him do it twice in run-throughs that week, not to mention two or three times in every practice session, I had every confidence he’d be able to pull it off and he did not disappoint me. It was by no means the best ta/tt he’d ever done (and wasn’t as good as Ilia, who remained quite deservedly in first place) but it was executed. This accomplishment sent me into such a state of euphoria that I was paying no attention whatsoever as Elvis took the ice - needless to say, it didn’t take him long to capture my attention when he crashed to the ice on his triple axel attempt and I realized that Todd would now definitely be in second place going into the freeskate.

I spent the Thursday prior to the final trying not to let myself get too excited every time the thought occurred to me that he could actually win. A talk with Todd’s father that morning put it in perspective when he cautioned me to remember that even if Todd skated his best, he still might not win. Cautious optimism seemed to be the watchword in the Eldredge camp, so I figured it best to go back to that state myself. It might actually be expecting too much of Todd, to be able to sell the program again and still skate with enough technical content to win. I decided I would just be happy to see him skate his best and be happy himself with how he skated.

My approach to Todd’s 1996 Worlds freeskate differed radically from the approach I’d taken the year before. At 1995 Worlds, taking what had been my usual approach, I swear I worked as hard as he did, fully focused, sweating the proverbial bullets, talking him through every jump. By contrast, this year as soon as he took the ice I found myself going into a state of suspended animation - frozen. For once he would have to do it all by himself, with no help from me (other than a bit of fervent prayer, if that could be said to count). Thus the sense of dazed unreality as I watched him execute a perfect ta/tt, followed by a perfect tf/tt, succeeded by one of his better triple lutzes. The prayer element did get a bit intense as he came around for that second triple axel, reducing me to a fervent "Oh, please, please.." Such was my condition at the time that it wasn’t until I got home and watched my tape that I realized he had substituted at the end of the performance a double axel for the planned double toe loop (thus adding even great technical difficulty to the program). During the final combination spin I came to full awareness as I realized exactly what he had accomplished - a totally flawless 8 triple performance, with every element executed exactly when and where it was supposed to be. It had been the skate of Todd’s career. While far from being his first 8-triple competitive freeskate (by my count it was at least the fourth such), it was the first time he’d managed in the same performance to do both triple-triple combinations and both triple axels and at the same time to pull off a performance exactly as planned. And all of it skated with passion and conviction. He really couldn’t have skated any better, and I told myself that that was what really counted - and that it didn’t matter where he ultimately placed in the competition.

That, at least, is what I told myself (and several people sitting around me) at the time. But after Ilia had skated so well and I realized it was going to be close, I changed my mind. It just wouldn’t be fair, I thought, for Todd to have had the performance of his life and not be rewarded for it. So I literally held my breath while waiting for the final results. When after what seemed like an eternity they appeared and Todd’s name was on top of the leader board, I actually screamed (an action for which I later paid the price with 2 weeks of laryngitis). After hugging literally everyone in sight (whether I knew them or not) unable to escape me fast enough, I turned around to discover myself surrounded by five of my closest friends, who had all made their way to my side from their various seats around the arena (undoubtedly with the express purpose of ensuring I remained vertical). I remember very little of the medal ceremony (delirium is tough on the memory).

I never did actually congratulate Todd for having won the World Championship. Instead, when I finally was able to pounce on him after he’d returned to the hotel, I hugged him, handed him a "Todd Eldredge-World Champion" gold pencil (a set of which I’d acquired last summer in a fit of acute optimism and which pessimism almost caused me to leave at home) and thanked him for making me delirious. Todd was pretty much in a daze as well. When I encountered him again some hours later in the USFSA Suite, he had re-appropriated his medal from his mother and was just holding it in his hands, staring at it, completely mesmerized. To my "Well, has it sunk in yet?", he looked up from his medal contemplation long enough to respond, glazed look in his eyes, "No."

It certainly was a rough road to that moment of supreme victory, but the trip was not without its positive side in terms of lessons learned. Along the way, Todd learned some hard lessons about the consequences of lack of sustained training time and the consequences of not being able to say "No" occasionally. And the Todd fan learned not only not to take anything for granted where Todd is concerned, but that being his fan was often the equivalent of riding an emotional roller-coaster, with the highs (ecstasies) and lows (agonies) apt to follow one another in rapid and dizzying succession. In other words, a ride with never a dull moment, but one more than worth taking.