SOCHI, Russia -- Instead of competing, Evgeni Plushenko took a curtain call.
The Russian withdrew from the men's event at the Sochi Olympics on Thursday after aggravating his chronically bad back in practice a day earlier. The 2006 Olympic champion was in obvious pain after tweaking his back again during warm-ups, saying afterward that he couldn't feel his right leg.
"Today in the morning, I can't jump … but I said to myself, 'Evgeni, you must skate. You must. You need two more days, the short and the long program,''' Plushenko said. "And I came on the warm-up and … I felt it, like knife in the back.
"I think it's God saying, 'Evgeni, enough. Enough to skate. You did a lot of figure skating,'" Plushenko added.
When his name was called, Plushenko came onto the ice slowly, his hands on the small of his balky back. He waved to the home crowd and then skated slowly to the referee.
After his withdrawal was announced, he waved again to the crowd and put his right hand on his heart.
"This is not tragedy what happened with Evgeni," coach Alexei Mishin said. "I was with him 20 years. Mostly we have good success. Mostly he was a winner."
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http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/olympics/sochi/2014/02/13/winter-games-figure-skating-evgeni-plushenko-russia/5450715/
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