odd Eldredge remembers the puzzled expressions that greeted him last fall when he turned up in Wichita, Kan., for sectionals. ''Some people were, like, what are you doing here?'' he says. ''That was my feeling as well.''
Todd Eldredge has his eye cast toward Salt Lake City in 2002. (Globe Photo / Jonathan Wiggs)
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Making Eldredge qualify for the US Figure Skating Championships is like making Pedro Martinez strike out a few farmhands before you put him back on the Red Sox roster. But them's the rules.
It didn't matter that Eldredge has won the title five times, has been to two Olympics, and once held the world crown. He had been away from Nationals for two years. He had to earn his ticket back.
It wasn't like the 29-year-old Eldredge had been growing cobwebs in retirement. He wasn't like Brian Boitano, coming out of the professional ranks with a one-time pass to consort with ''amateurs.'' Eldredge had kept his eligibility after the Nagano Games, skating in pro-ams and the occasional Grand Prix event. Now that Olympus was in sight again, it was time to get back into the game.
It wasn't about boredom. Eldredge's skating calendar is plenty full just with tour dates and exhibitions. It wasn't about money. Eldredge has as much as he can use, plus a custom-built home in the Detroit suburbs and three sports cars. ''I guess it's really about that unfulfilled Olympic performance,'' he says.
Eldredge has had three shots at the mountain, and all have been unsatisfactory. In 1992, when he was a medal favorite, he injured his back before Nationals and had to be voted onto the team. Then, at Albertville, Eldredge crashed on a simple double axel in his short program, ended up 10th, and watched teammate Paul Wylie win the silver.
In 1994, Eldredge got the flu just before Nationals, competed on rubber legs, and missed the team. ''I got sick and that was it,'' he shrugs. He made the Olympic team in 1998, but after positioning himself for a medal in the short program, Eldredge singled a triple axel in the final and ended up fourth.
''I sat back and thought about my performance in Nagano,'' he says. ''And I said, `That just wasn't right. That's not the way I can skate.' ''
Nobody thought he'd be back. Even though Eldredge and Russia's Ilya Kulik, the Olympic champion, kept their options open, they'd opted out of the international loop. When Eldredge didn't show for the next US Championships, conceding his crown to Michael Weiss, most skating observers figured he'd drift off to the pros, as Kulik eventually did.
''Everybody else kept dropping off, dropping off,'' Eldredge says. ''I was the last one left. I think people figured, well, he's seen the trend, he's having too much fun. He's not going to do it. But I was, `OK, whatever . . .' ''
Still, the competitive bar was going up. Since Nagano, the quadruple jump had gone from a parlor trick to a virtual requirement. One quad in the short program, two in the long. And the combination quickly progressed from quad-double to quad-triple to quad-triple-double.
Eldredge was the oldest guy on the board. He had never landed a quad in competition. What was he thinking? Whatever he was thinking, Eldredge was still watching.
He went to the last two US championships to watch Weiss and Tim Goebel, who was doing quads as easily as most people did triples. He went to the last two world championships to watch Alexei Yagudin and Evgeny Plushenko, the Russian skywalkers. ''I knew what they were doing and how things were going,'' Eldredge says.
What he concluded was that trying quads isn't the same as landing them, and that judges will still reward a well-executed, well-presented program, quads or none.
If Eldredge had any doubts, what he saw last season convinced him. Weiss retained his US title without even attempting a quad, even while Goebel landed three in the long program. And two of the three global medalists finished their quads asprawl.
''Last year's Worlds was a little hairy for everybody,'' Eldredge says. ''So it was reassuring and comforting to see that everybody struggled to do everything.''
Still, Eldredge knew he couldn't come back hoping that his rivals would all fall. He not only needed the quad in his holster, he needed to crank his long program back up to eight triple jumps, five more than he had been doing in the laid-back pro-ams.
''Getting back into that kind of training was the hardest part,'' Eldredge concedes. ''I hadn't done that program in a couple of years, and it takes a lot more out of you. Ten years ago, I used to do two long programs in a day. Now . . . forget it.''
He wasn't the springbok he was a decade ago, and Eldredge had to keep reminding himself of that when he'd botch a jump or two in practice. ''You tell yourself, I used to be able to do this,'' he says. ''No big deal. Eight triples . . . so what? Then I'd get out there, do a run-through and miss two things, and say, well, that's stupid. It's not that hard. Why can't I do it? But it takes that adjustment period to get it back. You have to learn all sorts of things again. The patience has to be there.''
The emphasis had to change, too, from quantity to quality. Do one long program, but do it well. ''I'm not going crazy killing myself out there,'' Eldredge says. ''Now, I look at it and say, in a competition I only have one shot at it. So why not practice it that way?''
Practice was one thing. Performing in the quad/triple world was quite another. Until he landed one in a pro-am last fall, Eldredge had never done a quad in competition. When he did, he promptly bought himself a silver Corvette to celebrate. ''After coming back without the quad and with everyone asking whether it was smart to come back without one, it was great to get that over with,'' he says.
Still, Eldredge's reentry at Skate America last autumn was rough. He fell on both the quad toe loop and the triple axel and was fifth after the short program. But he held it together in long program and salvaged the bronze medal behind Goebel and Yagudin, and went on to place second behind Yagudin at Skate Canada.
Then Eldredge headed for Kansas for the Midwesterns, to prove he was good enough to compete at Nationals. ''There were maybe 250 people there, all families of skaters, and the rink was freezing,'' says Eldredge, who landed another quad there. ''I was thinking, this is kind of crazy. I'm taking a spot away from somebody else. It's not like I'm not going to qualify for Nationals. The guy who came in fifth [Eric Schroyer] was, like, `Wish you weren't here.' It would have been his first Nationals as a senior. But he was nice about it.''
Not that Eldredge needed the quad to earn his return ticket to the show. Except for his two-year sabbatical (and 1992, when a back injury kept him out), he's been to senior Nationals every winter since 1988.
Eldredge was 16 that year, just up from juniors, skating against Boitano and Wylie and Christopher Bowman for a place on the Olympic team. ''It was an eye-opener for me, but fun,'' Eldredge remembers. ''I had no pressure. Like I'm going to the Olympics? No, you're not.''
Two years later, he was champion. By 1998, Eldredge had become the first man since Dick Button to win five times. He has won the title, conceded it through injury, won it back, lost it (to Rudy Galindo), won it back again, then abdicated. Along the way, Eldredge has also won the world title (in 1996) plus four other global medals.
The fisherman's son from Chatham has gone further than any cod boat could take him. He gets back to the Cape rarely now (''Not often enough, if you ask my parents''), most recently for an ABC shoot at his old rink.
''Half of the little kids didn't know who I was,'' Eldredge says. ''The parents are saying, `Do you know who that is?' And the kids are saying, `OK, whatever . . . ' ''
He is a Michigander now, living on a lake not far from where the Pistons play. ''I moved from Los Angeles to Lake Angelus,'' Eldredge says. ''So I'm still in LA.''
His house has all his wish-list stuff - movie theater with a drop-down screen in the basement, Jacuzzi, shower with 50 heads, plus a Ferrari, a BMW, and the Corvette in the driveway. And there's enough easy money in skating these days that Eldredge won't have to worry about being overdrawn for a while.
He didn't need to come to Causeway Street this week, but he did, just to get back in the game. All of the great ones - Button, Hayes Alan Jenkins, David Jenkins, Scott Hamilton, Boitano - capped their careers with an Olympic gold medal. Eldredge has one shot left. It's Salt Lake or bust. But to do it there . . .
''The Olympics in the US,'' Todd Eldredge says. ''For an American athlete, I can only imagine what that's going to be like.''
