Elvis Stojko

Throughout his career, Stojko remained faithful to his artistic vision, even though avoiding the typical, classical style of figure skating quite possibly cost him two Olympic gold medals. "If I skated like someone else because I was told to, that would be plagiarism," Stojko explained to Sullivan. When Stojko finally did win the world championships, skating in his own style, he was quite conscious of the prejudice that he had overcome and the rules that he had changed. In 1994 he declared to Maclean's Mary Nemeth, "I've opened the door for younger skaters to come up and do their own things."