Skater of the Decade: Evgeny Plushenko

This decade saw a tranisition from 6.0 scoring to the International Judging System. It was also defined by an on going debate in men's skating, "To Quad or Not To Quad." Evgeny Plushenko was able to dominate under both judging systems and always answered with a quad. Sometimes he would put an exclamation mark on his quad-toe statements with a quad-Salchow.

He entered the decade the young challenger to Alexei Yagudin and heir to the Russian skating dynasty. The rivalry between Yagudin and Plushenko became fierce. Plushenko was the only one to beat Yagudin in a few years by winning his first World Championship in 2001. They were co-favorites going into the Salt Lake City Games in 2002. Plushenko had a rare fall in the short, and Yagudin went on to some of the highest scores in the 6.0 system history securing his gold medal.

After those Olympics, Plushenko went full steam ahead to win two more World titles, 5 European titles and the 2006 Olympics. He even became the first skater to land two different quads in a program, and quadruple toe-loop and quad Salchow during a Grand Prix event.

His off-ice life has kept in the spotlight as well. He's a Russian superstar, he's been elected to city councils, has had two weddings covered extensively by Russian media and even took time to help Dima Bilan win the Eurovision Song Contest. This is like being on American Idol here, he's a Russian Ellen Degeneres, he's everywhere. I'm sure Oprah was thinking about having him a cover of some magazine...

He's coming back this season to resurrect Russian skating. He's still hitting the quads and even attempting triple axels-quad toes. His knees will probably need to be replaced next year, but he's pushing through anyways. He returned to competitive skating after four years away with a win at Cup of Russia and then got a crazy 100.09 points for a short program that featured a turn out on triple lutz. Craziness! All the points, all the quads, all the chest-thumping leads to a lot of noise about being a medal contender and wild card in Vancouver. How you can you not consider Plushenko a Skater of the Decade?