to best plushenko in many ways at his own game because he had the total package. look at that the height, the grace. and more than that, he really did everything. he was fast on his spins, his footwork was good and a few stumbles by plushenko was enough to win over the judges by 1.31 points. a very close final. after it was over, obviously thrilling for lysacek. plushenko said, i was positive i had won. i don t think there were a lot of people there who would agree with him. look at evan there. he becomes the first champion since 88 for the u.s. didn t he challenge him? didn t he challenge him and didn t plushenko say, if you can t do a quad, then it s just women s figure skating? reporter: that s exactly right. and you know what? he did his quad. he did a quad-triple and he ended up with the civsilver.
but surprisingly, those seductive moves were not enough as american evan lysacek came back and won. plushenko had to settle for the silver medal. wow. nice shot there. lysacek the first american to win gold since brian boitano did it in 1988. whistler mountain for skiing. li lindsey vonn had a little trouble. the combined, where you do downhill first and then the slalom. hit one of the gates in the slalom, went down. she thought slalom was going to be a problem because of the shin injury. the back and forth pressure of the leg. leading in the slalom. went down, unfortunately. no medal for lindsey vonn there. did not finish. back on the course on saturday in a race where she was expected to win the gold medal. five total events to win there. so if we look at the leader board right now, you know what, guys?
bunched under at the top. any of them could possibly win the gold. from the point from a spectator, a lot of us would like to see that whole combination, plushenko skates from jump to jump to jump. but the point is, he lands them. and this new complicated story system that virtually no one understands. what happened to getting a 10? it s with the quad. i know. chris jansing, thank you for that. that s the highest insult to call it a women s sport. anyway we won t get into that. coming up next on the daily rundown, is congress broke and repaired, steny hoyer joins. plus, setting the stage for afghanistan. we ll determine if president obama can keep his promise to begin withdrawing u.s. forces by the end of next year.
all right. so men s figure skating, there was apparently did you watch? yes, i did. what about this controversy over the jump when plushenko does a jump and lysacek says he s not going to. a difference in points, too. right? reporter: huge difference. mine the difference between a triple and a quadruple, if you talk to skaters, is enormous. and there are only a handful of men that consistent try to land quads. plushenko is one of them. arguably his artistic impression going from jump to jump is weak. then you have somebody like evan lysacek who skated an overall gorgeous program. in the past, it would have been very tough for him to keep up with the quad. but he did it last night. as you said, less than a point separating him from first place. so this is really going to be exciting.