Jumping Joe Rocks This Ice

by Nat Lathy

(Published in the June, 1997 issue of AMERICAN SKATING WORLD)

He leaps through the air, the guitars come in, the crowd goes wild. No, this is not a description of a Bruce Springsteen concert. But Joe Sabovcik does jump, and he does love rock and roll, especially Springsteen.

First, the nickname -- the 33-year-old Sabovcik is known by many as simply "Jumping Joe." The moniker fits because of the height he gets on his leaps, including a triple Lutz and a delayed Axel which seems to be headed for the ceiling. The professional skater also continues his relationship with the now immensely popular quadruple jump. Sabovcik is not sure how the label came about, but he thinks Scott Hamilton came up with it. Regardless of the originator, the nickname has stuck.

"A lot of times people don't know my real name," Sabovcik said. "My last name is not the easiest thing to pronounce."

Jumping is not the only trademark for Sabovcik. He gets as much attention for what he jumps to. Sabovcik loves to skate to rock music. Looking a bit like a rock star himself with his long hair, he constructs programs to the likes of Whitesnake, Meatloaf, Ozzy Osbourne, Pink Floyd, The Eagles and his hero Springsteen, whom Sabovcik met at a concert in 1996. People viewing skating events as trips to the opera (just without the glasses) might be left wanting, but many fans get caught up in the frenzy. The Olympic Bronze Medalist and two-time European champion feels right in his element delving into electric noise.

"Now I skate to music that I actually listen to at home," he said. "I'm familiar with it. And I'm comfortable with it."

Sabovcik also thinks that songs like Pink Floyd's 'Is There AnybodyOut There' and Springsteen's 'Trapped' have just as much of a place in skating as Malaguena and Firebird.

"Skating is an explosive sport with jumps and things like that," he said. "It goes quite well with rock music."

The rock genre also provides ample room for variation, Sabovcik said. He stresses the music he skates to offers enough differences to not require hearkening back to his Olympic eligible days of grinding out the classics. Sabovcik points out that the Eagles' 'Desperado' contains a country flavor, while Meat Loaf's 'Heaven Can Wait' has a somewhat classical arrangement.

Sabovcik feels good about the season winding down. He continues with the Skate The Nation tour (known in some places as Katarina Witt and Friends). Sabovcik finds the tour to be sort of a 1984 Olympic reunion, with the presence of champion Witt, along with the Pairs Silver Medalists Kitty and Peter Carruthers, who he welcomes enthusiastically.

"It's great to skate with Peter again," Sabovcik said. "We have so much fun together."

He also feels good about his competition record for the past season. His second-place finish at the December Challenge of Champions entailed finishing ahead of two of the medalists from the 1992 Olympics, including Gold Medalist Viktor Petrenko. Sabovcik feels his best skating happened at the Canadian Pro Championship. There he finished second to Kurt Browning, who had to win an on-ice battle with a snake to keep Sabovcik at bay.

Browning, with his toe loop at the 1988 World Championships, also holds the distinction of landing the first quad in competition -- a distinction which some feel belongs to Sabovcik for his attempt at the 1986 European Championships. The International Skating Union refused to give Sabovcik credit for the jump, because he raked the ice with his free leg on the landing. Sabovcik declines to demand a revision of history.

"I'm really happy for Kurt that he got it," Sabovcik said. "I know how hard it is to do it in a program."

Despite all the quad talk at the Olympic eligible ranks, Sabovcik does not think four rotations in the air are a requirement at this point to win a gold medal at a World Championship. He thinks the current fascination simply serves as a logical progression for the skaters.

"It just depends on what you grow up with," he said. "In my generation -- with skaters like Brian Orser, Scott Hamilton and Brian Boitano -- we grew up with the triple Lutz being the norm and the triple Axel being rare. Then you saw more triple Axels, but the only ones doing them on a regular basis were Orser, Boitano and myself."

Two triple Axels in a program (one in a combination) is now the norm in the men's event, Sabovcik said. He noted skaters who want to push the technical envelope now look to the quad.

"To them, it's like, 'Okay, I can do it, so why not put it in?"

Among eligible skaters in men's skating, Sabovcik is partial to Elvis Stojko and Ilia Kulik. This is not surprising, since he knows and has worked with both of them. Sabovcik has toured with Elvis, and jumped with him in Sun Valley, ID, one of Sabovcik's home towns (the other for Joe and ex-wife, Canadian skater Tracy Wainman, is Toronto). Last year, he also spent some time in Germany, helping Kulik learn the quad toe. Since then, the Russian skater has landed the jump in competition on more than one occasion.

"I'm not saying it's all because of me," Sabovcik said. "He has the talent. But he needed a little bit of a push in the right direction."

Fans looking for the quad in Sabovcik's competitive programs during the last season were disappointed. The jumper explains he left the jump out of the program to make a better impression with the judges. He found that missed quads during the previous season left him with little reward for all of the effort.

"I wanted to skate clean this year," he said. "The first year when I started doing them, if I missed the quad it's a let-down for everybody including me. I wanted to do one season where everything I had in the program, I knew I was going to land."

Sabovcik said he does want to attempt the triple Axel in competition next season. And he might try the quad also. Yes, he plans on skating to rock music next year too. The ice rocker said he wants to perform to Phil Collins 'I Don't Care Anymore'. But he says the program will start out at about three minutes long, keeping it from being a competitive program initially.

Sabovcik wants to be near his son Blade, who starts school in Toronto in the fall, which might make that Sabovcik's only hometown. But he hopes to have as much on-ice activity next season as he did this season.

"I hope it will be," he said. "I like what I'm doing."

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