Skating Still Means the World to Kwan

Nearly every time she competes, Michelle Kwan rewrites figure skating history.

The Manhattan Beach resident set an array of records two months ago at the U.S. championships in Atlanta, where she won her seventh consecutive U.S. title and 11th medal at the U.S. competition. Regrouping after a bobble in the short program had put her behind Sasha Cohen, Kwan earned seven perfect 6.0 scores for her long program, giving her 35 perfect 6.0s at the U.S. championships and 44 in her career, also records.

“After Salt Lake City, I was thinking, ‘Maybe it’s time to hang up my skates,’ but I realized, ‘You know, that’s not what I want to do,’ ” said Kwan, who was favored to win the gold medal at the 2002 Olympics but faltered in the free skate and finished third, behind compatriot Sarah Hughes and Russia’s Irina Slutskaya.

“I spoke to a lot of skaters and they said, ‘You’ll know when it’s over.’ For me, it’s not over. I still skate for myself. There are days you’re in pain and it doesn’t feel great in the cold rinks but there are days you feel great, like a 6-year-old with tons of energy.”

She’s channeling that energy into making more history, not reading about it.

This week, she will vie for her sixth world championship, a number reached in the women’s ranks by only Norway’s legendary Sonja Henie, who won 10 consecutive titles from 1927 through 1936. Among the men, Ulrich Salchow of Sweden won 10 titles between 1901 and 1911, and Karl Schafer of Austria won seven titles, from 1930 through 1936.

But Kwan, 23, won’t take to the ice in Dortmund, Germany, with thoughts of closing in on Henie’s mark, or about defeating longtime rival Slutskaya, who missed most of the season because of illness. Kwan competes for herself, not against anyone else.

“It’s hard for me to say, ‘I’m shooting to extend my titles,’ or whatever. It’s the wrong mentality, I think,” said Kwan, who trains at Lake Arrowhead. “If I do win, it would be my sixth title, but five are already in the past. They’re done....

“I could quit right now and go to school. I have lots of options. I could walk away right now and feel content, but there are a lot of things I enjoy about this. Even the last two years have been exciting. There have been a lot of ups and downs, for sure, and changing coaches twice.”

She ended a nearly decade-long collaboration with Frank Carroll in October 2001 and went to the Olympics without a coach; she worked with Scott Williams last season because she needed a friend more than she needed a critic.

She switched this season to Rafael Arutunian, whom she said has refined her technique and given her the basis to restore triple-triple combination jumps to her practices. Whether she’ll try one in competition this week will depend on how she feels and if she will need technical points to win.

“Everyone’s always in top shape for worlds, so you’ve got to keep nailing everything in the program,” she said.

Cohen won three Grand Prix events this season and is likely to be Kwan’s main rival.

Slutskaya, the 2002 world champion, is happy to be skating after developing vasculitis -- inflammations of the blood vessels -- and losing strength in her legs. She believes skating accelerated her recovery while taking her mind off her mother, Natalia, who’s on dialysis and is awaiting a kidney transplant. Slutskaya skipped last year’s competition to stay near her mother.

“I can’t live without figure skating,” Slutskaya said. “Of course I wish to win. Of course I wish to have a medal but this is sport. I will try to do my best.”

Johnny Weir, who earned his first berth at the world championships by winning his first U.S. men’s title, suspects his medal chances are slim.

“I know I can be top-three if I land my quad and the international judges fall in love with me,” he said, “but I haven’t been in front of the international judges before, and we all know they play favorites.”

Defending champion Evgeny Plushenko of Russia, Grand Prix champion Emanuel Sandhu of Canada and European champion Brian Joubert of France are contenders.

U.S. pairs champions Rena Inoue and John Baldwin Jr. of Santa Monica would have to skate exceptionally well to finish in the top five, as would U.S. ice dance champions Tanith Belbin and Ben Agosto. Competition begins Monday with the men’s qualifying and ends Saturday with the women’s long program.

Clearing New Hurdles

At 48, Edwin Moses is as driven as when he won 107 consecutive 400-meter hurdles finals and gold at the 1976 and 1984 Olympics. And after stepping up his training last summer with a goal of qualifying for the U.S. Olympic trials, he’s probably as fit as he was at Montreal, Los Angeles and his bronze-medal finale at Seoul in 1988.

“I could probably run the 100-meter hurdles competitively today,” he said.

But his plans to compete in his signature race were derailed by partially torn cartilage in his right knee, an old injury that hadn’t bothered him for years. Unable to put in the 1,200 miles of running he figured he’d need, he ended his comeback. Yet, the attempt was anything but a failure.

“I wasn’t trying to come back and run against Felix Sanchez,” he said, referring to the two-time world champion. “My whole goal was to prove sport can be used in positive ways, for social change.”

His aim was to publicize the Laureus Sport for Good Foundation, which finances and promotes programs that use sports to tackle social issues such as HIV, landmines, homelessness and the plight of children in war-torn nations. Moses and athletes from various sports visit countries around the world to add a personal touch that often has great impact. He estimated that he racked up 400,000 air miles and visited 26 or 27 countries last year.

The U.S. Sport for Good Foundation raised $1 million at a Beverly Hills gala last week.

“We don’t reinvent the wheel. We don’t build facilities. We find someone already dealing with these problems and we help,” said Moses, who lives in Orange County and Atlanta.

“I think we’ve accomplished a lot, but we want to do more. I think I’ve motivated a lot of athletes on the [Laureus] academy. It’s about motivating people, trying to do things other people think are impossible.”

Here and There

David Simon, president of the Los Angeles Sports Council, will present the city’s bid to play host to the 2007 World Weightlifting Championships to the executive board of the International Weightlifting Federation this week in Dresden, Germany.

The plan has three potential sites: a 7,000-seat theater that has been proposed across from Staples Center, the Shrine Auditorium, or the Terrace Theater in Long Beach. The federation is expected to announce a decision within a few days of the presentation.

Chanda Gunn of Huntington Beach, Angela Ruggiero of Simi Valley and Jenny Potter of Eagan, Minn., were voted finalists for the Patty Kazmaier Memorial award, given annually to the top player in women’s college hockey.

Gunn, a goalie, is a senior at Northeastern University; Ruggiero, a defenseman, is a senior at Harvard, and Potter, a forward, plays at the University of Minnesota Duluth. The winner will be announced March 27 during the NCAA women’s Frozen Four tournament in Providence, R.I.