MEN SKATERS DO THE IMPOSSIBLE.

Byline: PAUL OBERJUERGE

SALT LAKE CITY - It is sports' most daunting assignment, verging on ridiculous. On impossible.

Go out on ice skates and launch a batch of triple jumps. And at least a couple of those new quadruple leaps, too. Spin, glide, contort, and do it for four long minutes. Push the aerobic envelope. This is about athleticism, remember?

And while you're doing that sports stuff? Emote. Tell us a story. Give us the flowing lines of a balletomane and the dance moves of Gene Kelly. Some pantomime worthy of Marcel Marceau would be nice, too. Make us laugh, make us cry, give us goose bumps. This is about artistry, remember?

And if you can do all that, keep one foot in each realm and never lose your balance, you shall be men's figure skating Olympic champion, my son.

A young Russian named Alexei Yagudin delivered the entire multi-faceted, over-the-top package Thursday night in a jaw-dropping performance at the Delta Center.

It concluded with the crowd on its feet and four judges ready to award perfect ``6.0'' marks for artistry - unprecedented in Olympic history.

Yagudin clearly distanced himself from his competitors with his mastery of both halves of the figure skater's bipolar world. It was a no- doubt-about-it performance of such exquisite quality that it was possible, for a moment, to forget the squalid scandals that so often envelope this sport ... and to sit, exhilarated by a masterful performance.

Yagudin was an athletic virtuoso. He popped a quadruple toe loop, triple toe loop, double loop combination straight out of the box, and he was just warming up. Before he was done, he added another quad, a pair of taxing triple axels and four more triples of various hues, all but one landed with absolute grace.

But, as we have noted, this isn't only about jumping. If it were, track stars could win the men's skating gold.

Where Yagudin left the rest behind was his artistry. He didn't just leap out of the building, he transfixed it with his storytelling.

He skated to the sound track of ``The Man in the Iron Mask,'' and you didn't have to see the movie to understand what it was about.

From his opening pose, with one arm crooked over his head and another crooked under his chin in a clear statement of confinement, we saw that iron mask, and Yagudin's ability to carry that theme straight through his program, with sword thrusts and harrowing escapes, was almost preternatural.

We never forgot the iron mask, even while Yagudin was flinging himself skyward as if he were on a trampoline.

The ability to deliver thematic messages is why the Russian men are the best in the world at this sport, and have been for four consecutive Olympics. Hard on Yagudin's heels Thursday was countryman Evgeni Plushenko, who recovered from a short-program fall to take the silver medal.

Third, a game third, and winning the bronze, was the United States' best skater, Timothy Goebel.

If you want sheer athleticism, Goebel was your man. He uncorked three quad jumps, never before seen in Olympic competition, and tacked on six triples. No skater ever spent as much time airborne at the Olympics as Goebel did.

Where Goebel fell short was on the artistic side. He skated to `An American in Paris,'' but the connection between his violently vigorous program and his music was nearly impossible to discern.

It seemed, when his scores were posted, that the judges were niggardly. Two marks of 5.4 for artistry? Hey, the kid did a nice flying camel.

Only when Plushenko, then Yagudin came along was it clear what Goebel lacks. And what the rest of the world lacks, as well.

Where do the Russians get this, this ability to act and exert simultaneously? The Yagudins and Petrenkos and Urmanovs and Plushenkos?

Some suggest it is the national attachment to ballet, to classic art of every stripe. Whether they show up at the rink with the souls of artists, or whether it is pounded into them by their coaches, the Russians for more than a decade now arrive with the whole package, while the rest of the world is lucky to have half of it.

Goebel has a future. He could chase these guys to the top someday. But he is going to have to get videotape of Yagudin's routine and watch it about a dozen times, and then he will begin to see what it takes to be Olympic men's champion. Grace and elan to match the women, but with athleticism they only dream about. A package of achievement that matches that in any sport, any time.

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The combination of athleticism and grace displayed by such skaters as Alexei Yagudin is unsurpassed in sports.

Associated Press