Jozef Sabovcik: Playboy No More

by Monica Friedlander

(Published in the March, 1994 issue of TRACINGS MAGAZINE)

Outwardly there is little to indicate that at 29, Jozef Sabovcik is a changed man. With his straw-blond hair a few inches longer than in his competitive hey-day, and sporting a tie-dyed T-shirt studded with black skulls, Sabovcik looks more like a carefree hippie than an introspective father with renewed control over his life. But life has put the one-time Czechoslovak playboy to the test - and he seems to have come out a winner.

Many skating fans remember Sabovcik's competitive career coming to a grinding halt at the 1986 World Championships. His face grimacing in pain, Sabovcik limped through four minutes of agony on a badly-injured knee. When he finished, the audience breathed a collective sigh of relief. As it turned out, the two-time European champion was not to be seen on competitive ice again as he entered a two-year streak of surgeries and rehabilitation.

"After two surgeries, I had no muscle left," Sabovcik remembers. "My thigh muscle completely disappeared. They put me on crutches for 12 weeks. They couldn't figure it out. Little pieces of cartilage were floating around."

For a while skating took a back seat. In the beginning of 1987, Sabovcik married former Canadian champion Tracey Wainman after a story-book type courtship which started at Skate America back in 1985. The couple moved to Germany and Sabovcik's Olympic dreams may, in the long run, have proved to be a blessing in disguise. Always known for high-flying jumps, Sabovcik used to throw himself into the air with reckless abandon, not always sure where he would end up. The time had now come for a new approach to his training regimen.

"Jumpingwise, I'm better now than I used to be and I think it has to do with the fact I can't do a hundred jumps a day," he explains. "Before I wasn't really thinking about what I'm supposed to do. I was going by feeling more. Now if I want to get everything done I have to get it done in 25 to 30 jumps. I try to do everything correctly so I don't have to repeat it."

Adversity has also taught Sabovcik a different and more important kind of discipline -- a discipline over his private life, which he salvaged after hitting rock bottom a few years ago. The popular Czech once was known for his college dorm-type antics, such as setting off a fire alarm in the middle of the night at a Skate Canada competition just to see the girls with no makeup on. His reputation as a party animal was not exactly undeserved. With rare candor, Sabovcik admitted to a vice of youth which nearly cost him what he holds dearest in the world -- his marriage.

"I wouldn't consider myself an alcoholic, but I did on occasion drink too much and I didn't like it very much," Sabovcik admitted. "I didn't behave myself very good. I quit drinking three years ago. At any point where drinking starts to hurt your relationships, you know it's time for a change. I realized that either I was going to lose my family and lose everything that I have or I would change. I didn't really have a choice. Once I realized what was at stake, it wasn't a problem. Maybe it's part of growing up. I mean, I still like to party. Especially when you're the only one sober in the room."

During his time of crisis, Sabovcik separated for almost a year from Wainman. But instead of despairing over his troubles, he used the time to put his life in perspective and rebuild his shaky skating career. Now, living in Canada, he turned to Toller Cranston for help.

"Strangely enough, that time when we separated I really got into my skating," he said. "Toller got me under his wing and made me go and did all these programs for me. That's when it started happening for me. I don't want to say that it's because we broke up, but I had to find something, not to dwell on it. They always say that poets write their best works when their lives are in shambles. I needed to find something to hold on."

Once back on track, Sabovcik discovered a style he was comfortable with ("... relaxed, laid back, somewhat intense") and thus a way to be himself on the ice. He knows what he likes as well as what he doesn't. "I don't have numbers I have to smile in. I figured out that much." This renewed confidence in himself clearly shows on the ice. Never before known as an artist, Sabovcik learned to play to the crowd and bring them into his performance like never before.

And even though he still lands quads and triple axels on a regular basis (this year he landed his first quad salchow), Sabovcik has no regrets over what could have been or desire to reinstate.

"I've done it and it's other people's time," he said. "Also, quite frankly, I don't think I have that much of a desire to compete again. I never really liked competing. There was so much pressure put on me. 'You have to go to worlds. You have to be in the top five so we can send two people or three people.' There was always something. Every time I go back to compete I have to do something for somebody, not just for myself. It started when I was 15. They skipped over the champion of Czechoslovakia and sent me to worlds and told me, 'You better go and prove something.' That was the first time I felt fear."

If Sabovcik feels any hint of regret or soreness, it is less over dreams unfulfilled and more over not receiving credit for something he believed he did. At the 1986 Europeans, in front of an enthusiastic audience and millions of viewers, Jozef Sabovcik landed the first-ever quad -- or so he believed, along with the audience, judges and TV commentators. He was so elated that he forgot the rest of his program, but nobody cared. As it turned out, the ISU subsequently denied him a spot in the record books because his free leg scraped the ice after landing. Technically, they said, the jump didn't count. Sabovcik is not so sure, and believes politics plays a large role in deciding such matters.

"I think it really has to do with how strong your association is," he said. "Kurt landed it on one foot, did a small three turn after it. I landed it on one foot, scraped coming out of it. These are minor mistakes. If it has to be done properly, then it should have been Elvis. Just as in my mind the first triple axel wasn't Vern taylor, it was Brian Orser. But a lot of skaters do actually recognize that I was the first one (to do the quad). To do four revolutions in the air, land in competition recognized or not, it's a personal achievement."

Today Jozef Sabovcik continues to try quads every week while on tour with World Cup Champions on Ice. After having skated with Ice Capades and Holiday on Ice, he particularly enjoys this tour, which is almost like an extended family for him.

"We all know each other and respect each other," he said. "For the sake of the show some get higher billing, but it doesn't come between us. We're just people. Last year in Ice Capades they had the cast, the chorus, the stars. There were a lot of internal problems. The stars want to be principal, they think they're better. There's more politics. I stayed away from everything. Did my thing and went back to my book or CD."

What's more, Sabovcik has his own family along with him on the road -- Tracy as well as their two-year-old son, Blade -- or Blade Joseph Wainman Sabovcik, to be precise.

"A spelling exercise for him, early," the proud father quipped. And lest there's any question about it, skating doesn't have anything to do with the toddler's name. "We just wanted an original name. I was thinking of all these names like Dagger. Toller Cranston said, 'Grenade'. Out of Dagger I said, 'Edge', but that's not original because the guitarist from U2 is called Edge. From Edge came Blade."

Sabovcik spends a lot of time with his son, speaking to him in a few of the six languages he is fluent in. Although the responsibility of fatherhood scared him at first, now he says, he wouldn't change it for anything. "Blade hasn't known anything but travel since he was three weeks old. Some people say that's awful to drag your kid around like that. To me, people go to work 9 to 5 every day and don't see their kids. He's with us all day."

In addition to touring, Jozef competed in a number of professional championships and won the Pro Cup in 1990. He also starred in a number of TV specials, including Brian Orser's award winning Night Moves.

For him now there is one challenge left -- to do something for his country and remind his countrymen that in his heart he never left them. Since moving to Canada, Sabovcik has seen his country go through political turmoil; first the 1989 revolution, and then the subsequent splitting up of Czechoslovakia.

"I lived there for 23 years of my life, and all of a sudden ... you watch TV and you watch news and there's always upheaval all over the world. Always some kind of revolution. You watch it with a certain detachment. And then you see your city on TV. It was very strange."

Since his family is now Canadian and his career firmly planted on this continent, Sabovcik is seeking Canadian citizenship. But deep down he still considers himself Czechoslovak first.

"That's my home, even though my true home is with Tracy and Blade," he said. "For me it's weird to even think I'm Slovak and Petr (Barna) is Czech. We're not from the same country anymore. It's not real. Both of us are carrying a Czechoslovak passport. We're citizens of a non-existing country. Half my family is Czech and half is Slovak, so i really am Czechoslovakian."

The show he hopes to bring to his homeland is still in the planning stage, and Sabovcik is looking for a sponsor to help turn it into reality. The project is not intended either as a profit-making venture, nor as a means to further a career. It would instead be his way to pay back his country and the city of Bratislava for what they have given him. "I would like to go back to my hometown to present myself and my work, to let people know I didn't forget. In my hometown there was a great tradition for skating. I hope it will not die."

Whether the show takes place or not, Jozef Sabovcik will most likely be remembered by his countrymen as an important contribution to that tradition.

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