Elvis Stojko

Stojko retained the title of world champion in 1995, despite suffering a partially torn ligament in his ankle a few weeks before that prevented him from practicing many of his jumps until ten days before the competition. He failed to nail the landing of his quadruple toe loop early in his long program, so to compensate he added an extra, unplanned jump combination, a triple toe loop-triple Lutz, four minutes into his already strenuous program.

Stojko was the favorite going into the 1996 world championships, since they were held on Canadian ice in Edmonton, Alberta, but a poor showing in the short program put him in seventh place going into the long program. He gave a fabulous performance in front of a crowd that was shouting, clapping, and on their feet through much of his long program, but it was not enough. He finished fourth.

Stojko came back in 1997, again doing things his way: His music that year was from the sound track of the film Dragonheart. Stojko also had a new jump in his program, a quadruple toe loop-triple toe loop combination. He was the only person ever to have landed this jump in competition, and even he had done it only once, a mere two weeks earlier. Still, he nailed the combination, and with a little help from the rest of the field-defending champion Todd Eldridge fell, and of the two Russian competitors one performed poorly and one withdrew because of an injury-Stojko reclaimed his world title for the third time in four years.

This would be Stojko's last major victory in an international competition. He competed in the 1998 Olympics, but he had a badly pulled muscle in his groin that prevented him from doing any quadruple jumps. He skated a clean program of all triple jumps, which earned him a silver medal. Stojko decided to remain an amateur and to take one more shot at winning an Olympic gold, but his career was slowly sliding, in large part because of a series of injuries. He managed a silver at the 2000 world championships, but he wobbled on several of his jumps at the 2002 Olympics, where he skated a reprise of his 1994 Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story program, and finished eighth. He retired at the end of that season.

Stojko did not appear in competition for the first time in over 20 years in the 2002-03 skating season. During some of that time, he was the star performer in a month-long professional skating tour called Canon SK8 with Elvis. Stojko said that he enjoyed having the opportunity to skate purely for fun, but that he had not ruled out skating in professional competitions in the future.