Quotes of the Day

What would the Flying Tomato do? If Shaun White could trade in his baggies for spandex and his board for a pair of quarter-inch blades (and maybe cut his hair) to compete in men's figure skating, would he do it? Would he do the quad?

Uh, yes. No question. This is the man who clinched the gold on Wednesday and bettered his winning run with a second drop-in featuring the daring, innovative and wow-inducing Double McTwist 1260. He didn't have to do it. But he did. Because he wanted to. Because it's the Olympics. Because that's the kind of competitor he is.

Where was that sense of daring and anxiety-triggering anticipation in the men's figure-skating final on Thursday? It certainly wasn't much in evidence on the ice in the Pacific Coliseum. There was great skating, certainly — American Evan Lysacek skated a solid, clean program that earned him enough points to skate past heavy favorite Evgeni Plushenko of Russia and cinch the gold. The right man won, no doubt. But the entire night, I felt something was missing. We didn't see anything akin to the inspired performance Sarah Hughes gave in 2002 in Salt Lake City to best Michelle Kwan, or the house-rousing skate that Alexi Yagudin threw down that same year to claim the men's title. Something was missing, something that must have gotten stuck somewhere in the new computers the judges use to punch in their elements scores, and their skating-skills scores, and their transition and linking footwork marks, and their performance and execution scores — and let's not forget that catch — all assessment of "interpretation."

Don't get me wrong. Unlike many who follow the sport (and even some skaters themselves), I'm actually a fan of the new scoring system, the "code of points," first used in Torino. I think it's raised the level of skating skill to impressive levels in ways that don't always come across on television. The edges are sharper and deeper, the footwork is cleaner and crisper, and the spins are tighter and, frankly, more like spins than the squats some skaters were getting away with for years.

But one casualty in raising the technical precision of the sport is the spontaneity that makes sports exciting. Athletes at this level live on the edge of control and chaos, and it's the collective wow of moments when they butt themselves up against that line that take our breath away and keep bringing us back to watch. "It's important for any sport to continue to raise the bar and move forward," Paul Wylie, a 1992 silver medalist, told me after the men's short programs. "I have to admit, as a performer who did two triple Axels in my program in Albertville, I am surprised that more guys aren't doing the quad."

Ah, yes, the quad. It's been a hot topic among skating fans this entire week — this entire season, really — as the arguments go back and forth over whether a quadruple jump of any kind is necessary in the men's program or amounts to nothing but showboating. Lysacek decided, coming into Vancouver, not to include one in his program; he tried it at the U.S. nationals in January and fell. But he's the only skater among the top competitors who made that decision, sparking all kinds of buzz among the skating cognoscenti about whether he was pushing the sport back.

Regardless of where you weigh in on the debate, that's the thing that should be worrying skating officials and athletes alike: that the scoring system may be sucking out the drive and inspiration for innovating and evolving the sport that jumps like the quad represent. The stricter scrutiny that the system places on the execution of elements is biasing skaters to play it safe and skate programs that are constructed — move for move, from fingertip to toe point — with an almost passionless precision.

As a skater, the reason for quad queasiness is simple. If you can't land it, it's not worth even trying under the current scoring system. A quadruple toe loop jump, the most popular version of a four-revolution jump, gives you a base score of 9.8 points. You can add on a point or two for performing it well or lose a few points for bobbling the landing, but 9.8 is what the judges start with. A triple-triple jump combination yields 10 base points, without the hammering on your ankles and the angst of launching yourself into four revolutions over a sheet of unforgiving ice. Plus, if you fall on the quad, it's an automatic 1.0-point deduction and a downgrade of the jump to however many rotations you actually completed, not to mention those deductions for not executing the jump. "What it would take to make it less risky and more rewarding for people to try it would be not penalizing them for falling or under-rotating the jump as much as they do," says Wylie.

The quad is only the most glamorous example of what the sport might be losing if the penalties for trying one aren't reduced somehow, whether by awarding four-revolution jumps higher base points or by reducing the penalties for skaters who try and flub them. Plushenko, one of the most consistent quad jumpers around, landed a quadruple toe loop jump in the early seconds of his program and still came up short of the gold on Thursday, earning a silver. He has been outspoken all week about how he feels about the quad jump. "I believe that the quad is the future of figure skating. The quad is necessary ... Not doing the quad will be going backwards in time," he said after the men's short program on Tuesday, in which he was the only skater to land a quad cleanly. Following his silver-medal finish, he was pessimistic about the place the quad would have in the new system but remained adamant that such innovations be recognized and rewarded. "I was sure that I had won my second Olympic Games," he said. "But my basic position and attitude is that movement must go forward — never stop, never go back."

Bronze medalist Daisuke Takahashi agreed. "For me, the ideal skate would have to include a quad on my part," he said after his performance in Vancouver. "Although I did attempt the quad and it wasn't successful, I do not regret it at all. It's a challenge to me, and good experience."

The reality, however, is that the past two world champions earned their titles without a quad, and now, after three consecutive Olympic champions winning with programs that included a successfully landed quad, Lysacek has won without one. It's no coincidence that all of these titles were won under the new scoring system. And Lysacek himself couldn't have articulated better how the new rules may be pushing elements like the quad into the deep freeze. "I used to really enjoy training the quad, and I thought it was really important to try it in every competition," Lysacek said after the short program on Tuesday. "But several times I fell. Then I broke my foot, and it became less fun and more scary. [Now] the risk of injury is definitely there. So I decided to lay off that pressure on the left foot and try to make it through these Games successfully."

It was a strategy that certainly paid off on Thursday, making him the U.S.'s first Olympic men's skating champion since Brian Boitano in 1988. But at some point, amid all the calculating and constructing, you start to miss the good old-fashioned bravado that's a big part of any competition. "When you show up to a figure-skating event, if you don't have the hardest jump, from the time you're a little boy, you are apologizing a little bit," says Wylie. "I remember being little and showing up at competitions, and everyone asked, 'What jumps do you have?' " What answer will skating have in another four years?

• Alice Park / Vancouver
• Where was the sense of daring and anxiety-triggering anticipation in the men's figure-skating final on Thursday? Not on the ice in the Pacific Coliseum, where American Evan Lysacek cinched the gold with a clean — but safe — program