Makeup Test No Problem for Kwan

If Michelle Kwan has nerves, they are hidden deep under the makeup she is using to accentuate her graduation to the top of women’s figure skating. She was so poised and confident in the days leading to Friday’s short program in the world championships that her father, Danny, said he wanted to ask her, “Are you really that good?”

All he had to do to find the answer was watch with the near-capacity crowd in the Edmonton Coliseum as his 15-year-old daughter skated a highly skilled and sophisticated 2 1/2-minute program to flamenco music.

With six scores higher than 5.7 for required elements and seven 5.9s for presentation, Kwan, of Torrance, earned first-place votes from eight of nine judges to lead entering tonight’s long program.

She had to be that good to best China’s defending champion, Chen Lu, who skated a soft, quiet short program that former Olympic champion Carol Heiss Jenkins called the best she had ever seen. But Chen, who trained last summer in Burbank, earned only one first-place vote.

In third and fourth place are two Russians, Irina Slutskaya and Maria Butyrskaya. In fifth place is Germany’s Tanya Szewszenko. Then comes Japan’s Midori Ito and France’s Surya Bonaly, former medalists who fell in their short programs.

When the 26-year-old Ito, coming back after four years as a professional, missed her formal training sessions in recent days, it was assumed that she had found a more secluded place to practice. But she said after falling during her triple axel Friday and failing to complete the required jump combination that she has not practiced since qualifying Monday, referring vaguely to either a stomach illness or injury.

As for Bonaly, three times a world championship runner-up, she fell during her triple lutz and omitted a required element.

Neither Ito nor Bonaly should have been scored ahead of the United States’ Tonia Kwiatkowski, who made no major errors but was ninth. “Tonia is the crime of the competition,” said Toller Cranston, a former world medalist from Canada. “Everybody is appalled.”

In her first world championships in 1994, when she was 13, Kwan finished eighth. Last year in Birmingham, England, she finished fourth but was so disappointed the judges didn’t take her more seriously that she easily succumbed to Coach Frank Carroll’s orders for a makeover. That included a more mature look that requires extensive makeup and more sophisticated costumes. She also had to lose her ponytail.

The judges have responded positively, giving her titles in four of five international competitions this season.

“Somewhere along the line she developed a vision, including the personal look, the moves, the music,” Carroll said. “Something extraordinary instead of ordinary.”

But is she really that good?

“We’ll find out tomorrow night,” her father said.

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Figure Skating Notes

As expected, Oksana Gritschuk and Evgeny Platov won the dance for the third consecutive year, sweeping all three disciplines. Fellow Russians Anjelika Krylova and Oleg Ovsiannikov were second, and Canada got its only medal of the competition when Shae-Lynn Bourne and Victor Kraatz won the bronze. American champions Elizabeth Punsalan and Jerod Swallow were seventh.