He’s Pushing the Envelope, Not That Anyone Notices

Timothy Goebel went Christmas shopping on Rodeo Drive. Goebel threw himself into the pre-Christmas sales with the same enthusiastic ferocity he throws himself into jumping on the ice.

And Goebel, a 19-year-old freshman at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, is the best ice jumper in the country.

Two months ago in Colorado Springs, Goebel became the first figure skater to complete three quadruple jumps in a single program. This was an eye-popping four-minute display with a quad salchow in combination with a triple toe loop, a quad salchow alone and then a quad loop. It really didn’t matter that Goebel had fallen on an opening triple flip and stepped out of his most difficult triple jump, the axel, and that he finished second to Russia’s Alexei Yagudin in the Skate America competition.

Goebel cried at the end of his program and two months later nobody really remembers that Goebel finished second, only that he landed three quads.

“I have never seen anyone jump higher and with more authority on quads,” Costa Mesa skating coach John Nicks says.

“I told Timothy he should go for five quads now,” says Naomi Nari Nam, Nicks’ 14-year-old defending women’s national silver medalist.

Having come to town for some fashionable Christmas shopping and to do some promotional work, Goebel seemed like any other wide-eyed Beverly Hills tourist. He proudly showed off a trendy pair of new shoes and he was most excited about returning home to watch the unwrapping of packages. The folks back home were going to love these packages.

Not much fame has accompanied Goebel’s historic skating accomplishment.

It is, in this country anyway, simply not that popular to be a male figure skater. Nam, who is from Irvine, has earned worldwide acclaim and some lucrative endorsement deals in South Korea for finishing second to Michelle Kwan last year. Goebel has earned very little for doing what seemed impossible only two or three years ago.

“Nobody knew I was going to try three quads in that program,” Goebel says. He is sitting in the stands at the Culver City Ice Rink, home to the club that is staging the 2002 U.S. national championships at Staples Center. The event will serve as the Olympic qualifying competition. “I think a lot of guys went home and started adding 1/8quads 3/8 to their programs,” Goebel said.

Yagudin, considered one of the best male figure skaters in the world when he is skating well, said after Goebel’s spectacular display in Colorado Springs that “men’s figure skating is changing so quick and 1/8Goebel 3/8 is pushing us.”

There may be no greater tribute to Goebel than Yagudin’s statement.

Usually it is the Russian men who are the innovators and skaters who push the rest of the world.

And certainly Yagudin and the rest of the Russians are more accomplished skaters, more graceful and more finished skaters.

But as far as jumping, as far as getting high in the air and landing those four-revolution turns consistently and without giving the audience reason to think he is standing up accidentally afterward, nobody is better right now than Goebel.

“I’m landing my quads four out of five times in practice,” Goebel says. “I don’t feel like I’m taking any chances when I put three in the program.”

It was little more than a year ago when Goebel became the first U.S. man to land a quad in competition. Goebel did it at an untelevised junior competition in Europe, so there is only some scratchy taped evidence of this and nobody paid much attention when he came home.

Proving that was no fluke, Goebel landed his quad again last winter at his first senior World Championships in Helsinki. But Goebel’s rocky skating, which has been criticized as too disconnected and unmusical, left him in 12th place. Goebel, who grew up in suburban Chicago and who wants to become a doctor, says he is working hard at that pesky skating stuff, the spins and turns, the things that make a program more than moving across the ice merely to set up his jumps.

It is the jumping, though, that Goebel loves. “I think you’ll be seeing four or maybe even five quads in a program,” Goebel says.

That may take a while though. Until Goebel landed those three quads at Skate America, only Chinese skater Zhengxin Guo hit as many as two in a single senior-level program, at the 1998 Olympics.

As Goebel talked at the Culver City rink, he was left unnoticed. When he put on his skates and did a turn on the ice for a photographer, nobody pointed or waited for an autograph. If Goebel landed eight quads in a program, he would still be able to walk down the street anonymously. That’s just the way it is for male figure skaters in the United States.

But that is OK with Goebel. He’d like to make enough money from skating to help fund his medical school plans, but mostly Goebel simply wants to keep jumping. He’d like to return to Staples Center in two years and jump his way to a national title.

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Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com.