February 17, 2006 Source: University of Toronto: http://www.news.utoronto.ca/bin6/060217-2056.asp Buttle battles back to Olympic bronze Engineering student calls victory 'huge' Feb 17/06 by Elizabeth Monier-Williams (about) (email) Jeffrey Buttle, a U of T chemical engineering and applied chemistry student and Canadian men’s national figure skating champion rocketed back from a sixth-place finish in the Olympic short program on Feb. 14 to win bronze medal in the free program on Feb. 16 at the Olympics in Turin. Buttle’s strong performance in the free program was enough to vault him ahead of American skater Johnny Weir, Daisuke Takahashi of Japan and Brian Joubert of France in the final standings. His free program scores were second only to Russia’s Yevgeny Plushenko, who led the competition following the short program and won gold. Switzerland’s Stephane Lambiel won the silver medal. Skating to Samson and Delilah, Buttle scored 76.80 technical points and 78.50 for his program components. He lost marks for an unsuccessful attempt at a quadruple jump, a down-graded triple loop and for touching the ice on a triple axel, but scored high marks for the difficult footwork and inventive spins that are his trademark, a successful triple-triple combination and three additional triple jumps. "Oh, my God, it's nuts," were the first words out of his mouth, Canadian Press reported. "This is huge for me. ""I was happy with how I skated - I was just happy with that, but this is, like, insane. I didn't think I'd be able to come back that much."
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