article - Fedor Andreev an x-factor

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Fedor Andreev performs his qualifying free skate during
Senior Men competition at the Canadian Figure Skating
Championships in Edmonton, Jan, 6, 2004.

VANCOUVER -- The most accurate thing you could say about
Fedor Andreev during the three years he spent out of the
fishbowl known as competitive men's figure skating is
that he was a drifter.

Accurate, yes, but only in a literal sense.

The engaging 25-year-old was a big wheel in the sport of
drifting, a motorsport offshoot discipline where the
basic object is to control a car at breakneck speed while
fishtailing sideways.

"You're judged on style and speed and your angles,"
Andreev explained during a break in preparation for his
formal return to the Canadian figure skating championship
today in Vancouver.

"It's kind of like figure skating. It looks like you're
completely out of control with smoke billowing out of the
tires. It's completely insane."

It may have seemed like Andreev was drifting figuratively
as a skater too, however he steadfastly maintains
otherwise, saying it only partially defines his ambition.

After all, when it comes to making a living, there's far
more money to be made in his other pursuit: Runway model.

"Racing is always going to be part of my life. I'm
obsessed with cars. Even now as I'm talking to you I'm
thinking about cars. But the ratio what I made [in
modelling] to lost [in racing] is easily 10-1," he said.

The men's singles competition that begins today may well
shape up as a three-way battle for two world championship
slots between three-time defending champion Jeffrey
Buttle, 2007 runner-up Christopher Mabee and 17-year-old
Patrick Chan.

If so, that would make Andreev an x-factor as he begins
his assault on a first podium finish in five years.

He already has the intrigue factor, a Moscow-born skater
who moved with his family to Ottawa as a youth, then
started travelling the world.

What Andreev also has is a trait ideally suited for a
sport in a desperate search in Canada for its next
skating headliner: The It-Factor. The only missing
ingredient for Skate Canada, the sport's sanctioning body
which has pledged to start re-packaging its stars, are
some wins to go with his marketing potential.

He started off eight years ago modelling for Abercrombie
and Fitch after signing a contract with International
Management Group in New York. That led him to strutting
fashion runways for Gucci and Calvin Klein.

He's done commercials for Canon, had a bit part in
Disney's Enchanted, currently in theatres, and been
spotted in Vogue magazine.

Good thing Andreev had all this going for him though,
because after a back injury sidelined him three years
ago, his skating career was going nowhere.

"My heart wasn't into it; I had so many ups and downs,"
said Andreev, who beat Mabee to qualify out of sectionals
in December. "It was kind of good to do the real-world
thing for a couple of years to re-evaluate."

Returning from a modelling stint in Hong Kong to coach
and train with his mother, Marina Zoueva, in Canton,
Mich., Andreev caught the skating bug again last summer
while working alongside Canadian world-ranked ice dancers
Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir.

But he claims not to be totally smitten by skating, nor
is he ruffled by his return to the fishbowl.

"I kind of got suckered into it," he said of his
comeback. "I've been saying since I [returned] I'm
skating for fun, and for myself. Of course, when you're
competing it's different but I'm going out for a
performance. This is only one of my priorities. I have a
lot on my plate."

And depending on his career choice, it's a plate that
doesn't figure to be empty.

LINK:
http://www.nationalpost.com/sports/story.html?id=247164