French sports magazine L'Equipe said today that 2006 Olympic champion Evgeny Plushenko of Russia has announced he is making a comeback to figure skating, with intent to compete at the Vancouver Olympics a year from now.
Plushenko, a three-time world champion, hasn't competed since he won the gold medal in Turin and has been busy with other ventures. He was married just before the Olympics, had a son, and then was divorced a year later. In the divorce, he was allowed to keep his luxury flat in St. Petersburg. The flat was a reward from Russian president Vladimir Putin after his gold medal win and wasn't considered an asset that could be split with his wife.
At the Turin Olympics, Plushenko chalked up the most impressive scores in the history of the sport, and one of them still stands as a record: his 90.66 points for a short program.
He did have the record for the free skate (167.67) and for total points (258.33), set at the Olympics, but Japanese skater Daisuke Takahashi blasted both of those at the Four Continents championships last year, with a 175.84 long program score and a total of 264.41.
If Plushenko does make it to the Olympics again, he'll have to meet up with Patrick Chan, who has never competed against him and who, in 2006, was a 15-year-old prodigy. Chan has now been flirting with Plushenko's marks, and we haven't seen the best of him yet.
After he left the sports arena, Plushenko was also elected to the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly. He's one of the three main leaders of the party Fair Russia Spravedlivaya Rossia, which earned 21.9 per cent of the votes.
Plushenko was too tired to compete at the world championship following the Turin Olympics and took the next year off. He had long suffered from knee problems, but had double knee surgery in July of 2007 that proved more difficult than expected. He had a meniscus removed, and underwent rehabilitation.
Shortly after Russian male skaters bombed at the 2007 world championships in Tokyo, Plushenko announced that he was returning to the competitive wars to because he was concerned that Russians would lose three spots for the following world championships - and maybe even the Vancouver Olympics - if he didn't come back and bridge the gap until younger Russian men found their footing.
But he didn't come back.
For the past couple of years, he's had no Grand Prix assignments.
First, he'd have to win his way back onto the Russian team by competing at his national championships next December.
L'Equipe says “local media” - assumed to be those in Russia - say he's decided to defend his Olympic title.
We'll see.
