Lysacek back as whirlwind slows

In the four months since Evan Lysacek was last in Spokane, he’s had quite a time of it.

An Olympic gold medal in Vancouver, B.C. A second-place finish on the popular TV series “Dancing With the Stars,” which ended Tuesday. Performing at 26 of 41 stops on the Smucker’s Stars on Ice tour.

It’s the latter that brought him back to town Friday. Lysacek, 24, joined other figure skating stars, including Sasha Cohen, Todd Eldredge, Charlie White, Meryl Davis and Jeremy Abbott, at the Spokane Arena.

Friday was his first free morning since “Dancing With the Stars” began its season in March. Typically, he’d spend eight hours working on his dance routines before taking the ice in the evening. He and Cohen marked the day with a walk through downtown Spokane.

“We really felt like a part of the city. I really like it here a lot,” Lysacek said shortly before a pre-show practice Friday. “We felt like locals. Everyone would say hi to us like they’ve known us their whole lives. It was a cool experience just because I haven’t had that in too many other cities.”

Lysacek has a bit of history with Spokane. He won his first national championship here in 2007. In January, he placed second in nationals here and earned a berth to the Winter Games in Vancouver, where he captured the gold.

“I love it here. I know (the crowd is) enthusiastic, but they’re also knowledgeable about skating and that makes it kind of cool for us to skate for them,” he said.

With the “Stars on Ice” show, he and the other skaters are “enjoying the moment and being able to skate for fun, for our fans, and be driven by what the audience wants, with no judges,” he said.

The decision to follow his performance in Vancouver with a stint on ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars” was sparked by a desire to do something fun – other than skating, he said.

“The last eight years of my life have been pretty intense, and I’ve been just doing one thing,” Lysacek said. “It was so fulfilling because I’ve been an individual athlete my whole life, and just to be able to be part of what really was a family, that was a special experience.”

Doing both shows was a challenge. He would tape the TV show in Los Angeles on Mondays and Tuesdays, then fly out Tuesday nights to catch up with the skating tour.

“For me, it was like living in two different worlds at the same time,” Lysacek said.

He also hopes that what he learned on the dance floor will help his skating. Turns out his experience on ice didn’t give him as much of an edge on the dance floor as some might expect.

“I thought there was some stuff that I’d be able to take from the ice to the dance floor, but it was very little because the movements are different and the posture is different,” he said. “I ended up finding it easiest to forget about skating and learn from square one.

“I think maybe more from the floor will translate to the ice, with a knowledge of different styles of dance and music that I never knew about before.”

At this point, however, he’s not sure what his future holds. He has not decided if he’s going to resume competitive skating next season.

“I think I need a couple days off to think about stuff,” Lysacek said. “I’ve had some very cool offers to do some acting and to work in sports broadcast, which is something that I’ve thought about doing for a while.”

But he’s also keeping competitive skating on the table, looking ahead to the 2014 Winter Games in Russia.

“I think time will tell for me and I haven’t had the luxury of time.”