FIGURE SKATING; Zayak's Biggest Jump: A Leap Into the Past (original) (raw)
Sports|FIGURE SKATING; Zayak's Biggest Jump: A Leap Into the Past
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FIGURE SKATING
- May 16, 1993
Credit...The New York Times Archives
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May 16, 1993
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Section 8, Page
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The way she remembers it, Elaine Zayak never missed a jump. She watches the old videos, the ones from 1981 and 1982, and sees the double axels and triple loops flow from her body like sweet, soft ballet.
"It came so easily then," she said. "So naturally."
Her father, Richard Zayak, would drive from their home in Paramus, N.J., to her New York practice rinks in Farmingdale or Monsey and offer his daughter 1perperfectjump.Helostplentyofmoney,sometimes1 per perfect jump. He lost plenty of money, sometimes 1perperfectjump.Helostplentyofmoney,sometimes50 a day. It was his way of making sure that she didn't become lazy. She never did, really. But physiology and circumstance began to spiral out of control after Zayak won the figure skating world championships in 1982, at the unpolished age of 16 years.
Thereafter, the judges stepped all over her compulsory figures, ranking her so low she could not possibly recover in the short or long programs. She gained weight, from 120 pounds to 136. A new law, the Zayak Rule, prohibited more than four triple jumps for women in the long program, limiting her athletic advantage. She wanted to do seven. Missed the Nurturing
Zayak walked out of the world championships in 1983, then finished sixth at the 1984 Olympics in Sarajevo. By 1985, she had joined a professional world that she found cruel and non-nurturing.
"They didn't care if I was unhappy," Zayak said of her touring days with the Ice Capades and then with other shows. "They just put me on the scale and said I was fat. My coaches had always been my world. If I needed help, I got it from them. If I needed, I'd borrow clothes from them."
Zayak couldn't get back fast enough in 1991 to Monsey, in Rockland County, to rejoin her old coaches, Mary-Lynn Gelderman and Peter Burrows. She worked with them, helped coach with them for a couple of years. Then, to the shock of the figure-skating community, Zayak applied for amateur reinstatement this April with the International Skating Union. At age 28, thin again at 120 pounds, Zayak wanted to be an Olympian.
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