Skaters bringing bit of Olympics to Everett show

Evan Lysacek remembers stepping on the ice at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, with 10 years of training behind him — and a high fever.

The day before, with an IV needle in a vein, he found himself thinking, "There's no way I'm going to be able to do this."

Then the 21-year-old figure skater drew himself up — and drew on sheer determination.

He told himself: "Look, I worked 10 years. If I go out and fall in everything in my whole program, it's still worth it to finish it. It's still worth it to get out there and have the courage and have the integrity to finish what I started."

That's when the Olympics became about something different.

"It became about just learning what's inside of ourselves," Lysacek said. "I'm very lucky to have figured [that] out."

Even with a fever, Lysacek went out and posted a personal-best score, finishing third in the free skate and fourth overall.

Lysacek will reprise his Olympic performance with international colleagues in the John Hancock Champions on Ice show at 3 and 8 p.m. Saturday at the Everett Events Center.

Many of the skaters will present their Olympic programs, such as Shizuka Arakawa's gold-medal triumph from her free-skate long program at the 2006 Winter Games. Gold medalist Evgeni Plushenko will recreate elements of his performance from this year's Games.

Between solos and two ensemble numbers will be comic skater Dan Hollander and ice acrobats Vladimir Besedin and Oleksiy Polishchuk. Armenian rings expert Irina Grigorian will do a novelty number.

But the focus is on the elite athletes, many of the biggest names in the sport: soloists Michelle Kwan, Sasha Cohen, Irina Slutskaya, Kimmie Meissner, Surya Bonaly, Victor Petrenko, Rudy Galindo, Johnny Weir and Stephane Lambiel, and pairs skaters Tatiana Totmianina and Maxim Marinin, Tanith Belbin and Ben Agosto, Rena Inoue and John Baldwin Jr., and Marina Anissina and Gwendal Peizerat.

In Champions on Ice, the skaters perform the difficult elements that made them champs, but the show is also a sampler based on the premise: If there were no rules, what would skaters do?

Lysacek, for example, goes on the ice with a boom box and compact discs in a routine he calls "How Do You Pick Skating Music?"

"I just flip though and keep changing the songs, and I just play with it," he said. "I want to showcase the skating and the elements, and that's something that I feel about competition."

Lysacek predicted that innovative skating will come out of a new judging system implemented at the 2006 Olympics. By the time of the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver, B.C., he said, the judging "will be perfected, and we'll see some really cool things from people."

Lysacek visited Everett earlier this month to coach members of the Everett Figure Skating Club at the Comcast Community Ice Rink.

He helped shape performances, encouraged jumps and spins, and built confidence among the youths. In a short while, they were working up routines, unafraid to try back-entry jumps and spins, fall down, get up and give even their recoveries a big smile and some showbiz pizazz.

"I love kids," Lysacek said. "I see in them the love for the sport that I had when I started.

"I just had this love for the freedom that skating gives you on the ice. There's not many things that can match it. That's what I see in these kids — a freedom and a joy that sometimes gets lost in corporate endorsements and TV contracts and the pressure of competition."

The Naperville, Ill., native knows something about all that. A skater at age 8, by 1996 he had worked his way up the junior circuit to win the Junior Olympics.

He also took silver medals three times before graduating to adult competition with the help of legendary coach Frank Carroll, with whom he began to train in 2003. In 2005, the first year he was on the senior circuit full time, Lysacek won a bronze medal at the World Figure Skating Championships. He was the first American to medal in his debut at the Worlds since 1957.

While in Everett, he shared some insights with the skaters he was working with.

"We go out, and the rink is cold, and every light is on you, and every person in the audience is silent, and they're staring at you," he told them.

You take your starting pose, take a deep breath, and the music starts.

"And when the music starts, I just relax," Lysacek said. "I forget who's watching me, and I go into this free parallel world where I can do whatever I want and I can move however I want."

Diane Wright: 425-745-7815 or dwright@seattletimes.com