Jozef Sabovcik

by Monica Friedlander

(Published in the March - April, 1996 issue of BLADES ON ICE MAGAZINE)

When Jozef Sabovcik flings himself into the air he gets enough height out of those rocket-booster muscles of his for most of us to gasp a good many times before he finally gives in to the pull of gravity. So it may come as a bit of a surprise to some that Mr. Quad is not always eager to rise to great heights.

"I'm afraid of heights," concedes Sabovcik matter-of-factly. "I don't particularly like flying. I would never do bungee jumping. It's everything I'm not in control of that I don't like."

Fortunately for him, there are a good many things this former Olympian has under firm grip right now. At 33, he's quadruple-jumping his way into national and international headlines. His skating seems to improve by leaps and bounds, and he seems to derive more joy out of it than he ever did as an amateur competitor. Most importantly, Jozef Sabovcik has a new set of priorities in his life which bring him more personal satisfaction than any medals he ever won.

"I think of things a lot differently now than I did when I was 20 or 21," explains Sabovcik, who in the mid 1980s won two European titles and an Olympic bronze medal skating for his native Czechoslovakia. "Now I have different responsibilities and I have to think of other things. Skating is not the only thing. That's why I like doing it."

It doesn't take much to realize what comes first in Sabovcik's life. Most people who watched him skate in the Sun Valley Men's Outdoor Championships last fall could not help being touched by the sight of Sabovcik gliding back to the rail after he finished his program and picking up his three-year-old son, Blade. The spitting-image of his father, the little boy is Sabovcik's true pride and joy. As it happened, shortly before his Dad competed in Sun Valley, Blade had come down with a nasty case of chicken pox. Sabovcik (now in the process of divorcing one-time Canadian champion Tracey Wainman) rarely left his son's side. Even while doing this interview, he seldom took his eyes off Blade, by then sound asleep and gently stirring in his father's arms.

Fortunately for Sabovcik, Blade was up and about two days later. And with that weight off his shoulder, Sabovcik came close to landing the first quad ever done in a professional competition. He did not win the event, but, just like he did ten years earlier, he made headlines.

It was at the European Championships in 1986 that Sabovcik similarly thought he had made the record books with the first quad ever landed in competition. In a controversial decision, however, the International Skating Union decided that his free leg had touched the ice on landing and denied Sabovcik credit for the jump. But his reputation as one of the world's greatest jumpers stuck with him.

Forced out of the competitive arena in 1986 by severe knee injuries and a series of subsequent surgeries, Sabovcik kept a low profile for years, while building the foundation for a solid professional career. After many years of teetering on the edge of stardom without ever reaching it, this year he feels he has finally found his niche in the sport. Sabovcik put years of personal problems behind him, took a new approach to training and skating, and relaxed into a style of skating uniquely his own.

"I feel a lot better now than I did ten years ago, physically and mentally," Sabovcik said. "When I was younger, I never thought anything could hurt me. I thought I was invincible. Now I take care of myself. I learned now to structure my numbers. I found a style that is comfortable for me. And I learned how to manage myself better, when to take some time off. For me, it's not training anymore. I know everything I knew when I was younger. My body knows how to do it. It's mainly in the head that you make the mistakes."

Nevertheless, he knows that his knees need pampering as well. "I know what my limit is and I try not to exceed it," he continued. "Before, I would jump a hundred jumps a day and a lot of them were misses. Now I just try to do it once and do it properly. "

The results of this strategy speak for themselves. Ten years after giving up competitive skating, Sabovcik's jumps are better and more consistent than ever - even when executed in stage shows on postage stamp-size ice surfaces. "I think a lot of the time people don't know what happened," he laughs, referring to his much celebrated quad. "If I do one properly, people think it's only a triple a lot of the time. Actually people clap harder when I fall. They think that was something really hard."

As much as he loves to show off his quad, Sabovcik is leery of including it in professional competitions too often, for fear of creating unrealistic expectations and focusing attention on one element at the expense of the rest of the performance. When he tried it in the past, he explained, "It was such a large anticipation for it, that when I didn't do it, everyone was so disappointed. I'm not saying the judges didn't give me what I deserved, but if you're disappointed with something, it's hard to be objective. But it's in me, too. If I go out there and I want to do it so bad and I know I do it every day - then if it doesn't happen, something goes out of me."

Given his technical prowess and renewed love for skating, many find it surprising that Sabovcik did not reenter the amateur competitive fray, shying away from a chance to strut his skills in front of international judges. As it happens, thoughts of Olympic glory are not the driving force behind his skating, nor is winning high on his list of priorities.

"Everybody wants me to compete and reinstate - Tracey [Wainman] has been on my case for years - but I don't really have the drive for it. I think if I did start competing again I would lose everything. I like doing what I'm doing now and I think that's why I can do everything. . . . What I mainly like is to perform and do well. If I can win at the same time, that's great. But I'm not going to be heartbroken because I didn't win. Winning is important. You wouldn't do this sport unless you want to be the best at something, whether it's spins or jumps, or the best overall. Maybe there are some things I could be the best at, but I'm not positive that at any given day I'm the best overall. I never think about it in that way."

Nor does Jozef Sabovcik live with any regrets over an amateur career that was cut short due to injury. "I never really felt like I didn't accomplish something," he said. "A lot of people tell me - even Scott Hamilton told me, 'Man, you could have won this and that.' It's not something I miss. It's not something I ever wanted so bad."

Another reason Sabovcik did not consider reinstating is that the amateur scene has changed so much since his competitive hey days that he is not sure he would enjoy the new landscape. Always known as a bit of a party animal back in the eighties, Sabovcik seemed to compete for the fun of it more than for the trophies. Now that the sport has turned into big business, he looks back with nostalgia to the days when winning was about something other than dollar signs.

"I have to say we had more fun than the kids have now," Sabovcik said, "because there was no money on the line for us. Everyone competed and that was the thing to do. I wouldn't want to compete now with all the pressures. Not only winning, but what is it going to mean to my career financially later on. We just used to have a lot of fun... I just hope there are still people who actually love doing the sport and don't just do it for the money. It's sort of sad."

Born in the Slovak capital of Bratislava, Jozef Sabovcik has lived for most of the past decade in Toronto, Canada, and now enjoys the benefits of dual citizenship. Although Sabovcik feels part Canadian now, his true allegiance will always be to his native land (which, to his chagrin, has now split into Slovakia and the Czech Republic.) "My first home will always be Czechoslovakia. I don't think that will ever change. I don't think that can ever change in anybody, no matter what they say. . . I'm a stranger in a strange land. I'm European. So I just feel fortunate that I have the opportunity to skate here."

In addition to touring the U.S. with shows such as World Tour Champions on Ice, Sabovcik has also co-starred in a number of major television specials in Canada, including Brian Orser's Night Moves and A Midsummer's Night Dream, with Liz Manley. He also skates in the weekly Sun Valley summer shows and now competes in professional competitions with increased frequency. His next touring engagement is an IMG-sponsored tour of the eastern and midwestern United States during February and March.

Over the past few years Sabovcik has lived on both sides of the U.S.-Canadian border, making his home in Sun Valley for part of the year. The most difficult part of this arrangement for him is the on-again, off-again separation from his son. While Blade was a baby, he used to be on the road all the time, touring the world with Sabovcik and Wainman. Now that he's older, his father is concerned that the boy lead a normal life.

"Tracey and I maintain a friendly relationship, which is very important because of Blade," he said. "He knows I love him and he knows Tracey loves him and I think it's going to be a little difficult for him to understand why the two people who love him the most and that he loves the most don't love each other. Things happen in life and there's nothing you can do about it."

In addition to his skating and family, Jozef Sabovcik's life circles around his passion for music and the music industry. An avid rock music aficionado, Sabovcik owns a gigantic CD collection and writes reviews of new albums for an electronic magazine on the World Wide Web. Not only does he love to skate to his favorite rock songs, but he sometimes tends to get all wrapped up in the lyrics and themes of the songs he picks. "If I try to listen to the lyrics, I don't just try to skate to the music. Lots of Bruce Springsteen's songs are so complicated, they're like a story that would take half an hour production to portray on the ice. They actually made a movie out of one of his songs (Highway Patrolman). So if you do a two hour movie out of a four minute song, how can you possibly do it on the ice?"

As a rule, Sabovcik likes to pick his own music and works on much of his choreography with fellow skater Stuart Sturgeon, who shares his tastes in music and choreography. The one exception is his work with Toller Cranston, who used to be his choreographer for years and still does some of his numbers on occasion.

"Every time you work with him is a new experience," Sabovcik said of Toller Cranston, one of his idols since he was ten-years-old and first saw Cranston at Worlds in 1973. "He's bursting with ideas. When he's ready to work with me it's almost overwhelming, because he knows exactly what he wants. I leave absolutely everything to him - music, costume, choreography, everything. But what's nice about it is that he still lets me do it my own way, so I don't end up looking like a bad version of him. There is only going to be one Toller."

The most important consideration for Sabovcik in designing his numbers is to be true to his taste and style, regardless of where he skates or what people may expect of him. One thing he decided, for example, is that he does not like to smile in his numbers. Another is that he can't stay away from Bruce Springsteen music for very long.

"Not everybody likes that," Sabovcik laughed. "But by the end of the number they usually get into it... Every time I start to second guess about things, it's already not right. This may sound selfish, but first of all I have to like what I'm doing, because if I don't, the audience is going to know anyway."

Not only does Sabovcik skate his own way, he also maintains a personal style that is, well, not the rule for the average figure skater. "A lot of the time there are preconceived notions about how a skater is supposed to look," laughed Sabovcik with his usual self-deprecating humor." Never one to go along the beaten path, Jozef still sports his straw-blond hair down to his shoulder. In fact, he seemed very disappointed at one point last summer that nobody noticed his brand new haircut. After all, his hair was an inch above shoulder level!

As for his tastes in music, they are a bit on the unconventional side as well for a skater. So far, he did not push his luck and kept his wildest dreams to himself. But who knows? One of these days . . .

"If you are willing to take chances, then you can do anything you want," he said. "I'd probably get a heavy metal band, like WASP, and make up numbers to songs and have them play on stage. But they're pretty brutal, you know. I like hard rock and I like heavy metal. But let's face it: If I went into an arena and all of a sudden started some heavy metal, people would run. But the thing is, if I really wanted to, I could do it.."

Then he added with an impish grin: "I would just probably never work again." I'd bet him a quarter or two that he would, after all.

Internet Page Design by Luree