Michelle and Tara’s Excellent Adventure

If the United States has more admirable athletes on skates than the ones who performed here Wednesday, I’d like to see them. They embodied all things Olympic--poise, courage, determination and not merely a touch of brilliance.

I guess you know by now that I’m not writing about the U.S. men’s hockey team.

Michelle Kwan and Tara Lipinski, unlike the millionaire hockey players who left the Olympics as fast as a speeding bullet train could take them, did exactly what they set out to do Wednesday at the White Ring, each negotiating the 2 1/2-minute high-wire act known as a short program with precision and grace.

As expected, Kwan and Lipinski are first and second going into Friday night’s long program to determine the Olympic women’s figure skating champion, a title that has become as precious as world heavyweight champion or world’s fastest man.

It’s easy to forget sometimes that their ages are 17 and 15.

“I would fold under that pressure,” U.S. Figure Skating President Morry Stillwell said of the short program, which Kwan’s coach, Frank Carroll, calls “stark terror” because one major mistake on a required element means no medal. More mistakes than that can mean 17th place, as the third U.S. skater, Nicole Bobek, discovered.

“But I know Michelle and Tara pretty well,” said Stillwell, of Los Angeles, “and I’m not surprised by anything that pair can do. They’re both great under pressure.

“No one ever was more focused than Michelle. When she starts to zone in before a performance, she doesn’t see you. She’ll talk to you, but you’re not really there.

“Tara stops being a little girl. You’ve talked to her. She’s a kid. But not out there on the ice.”

Neither, fortunately, has forgotten to be a teenager since arriving at the Olympics.

Lipinski, of Sugar Land, Texas, probably has gotten more out of the experience, marching in the opening ceremony, sitting on sumo wrestler Akebono’s lap before a practice, rooming with other skaters in the village.

She was having so much fun in the village that she pouted when her mother took her out for a few days to train in solitude in Osaka. But she won a promise that she could return in time for the NHL players’ arrival in the village.

The lone mistake Lipinski has made here was in seeking out Eric Lindros from among the U.S. hockey players.

They told her to try the Canadians.

“He plays for the Philadelphia Flyers, so I thought he was an American,” she said, giggling.

She waved goodbye to her parents after a practice the other day, walked back into the rink and jumped onto the back of a male ice dancer, who carried her away.

Kwan missed the opening ceremony, choosing to stay home in California at Lake Arrowhead and train for a few extra days, and is living in a hotel with her parents instead of the village.

But she is as open to this Olympic adventure as Lipinski, beginning an interview the other day by breathlessly telling reporters about the size of the strawberries that she’d seen in the supermarket.

“It’s because they’re grown under artificial light,” she explained.

Asked how often he’s reminded that Kwan is a teenager, Carroll said, “Each time she swoons over Leonardo DiCaprio.”

But, in an age when women’s figure skaters are little more than girls, the title is won by the teenager who does the best job of convincing the judges that she’s not one.

Kwan’s two-year advantage over Lipinski cannot be overcome in the next two days.

For someone who is trying not to act her age while competing, Lipinski’s choice of music for the short program, from the animated movie “Anastasia,” seemed self-defeating.

She, however, made it work for her, bringing joy to a tense, arduous exercise and the crowd by practically frolicking across the ice.

When she nailed her final jump, a double axel, her eyes were bright enough to light the entire valley beneath the Japan Alps.

“Oh my God, this was the best program I’ve ever done, ever,” she told her coach, Richard Callaghan.

Later, talking to reporters, she said, “After the double axel, I said I wish this was a four-minute program and I could keep going and enjoy the moment.

“This was one of the most happiest moments of my life.”

Her four-minute long program, though, is more classical, making it more difficult for her to interpret artistically. She does not yet have the sophistication.

Even though she was visibly nervous and did not skate with the same abandon as Lipinski, it is that quality, sophistication, that earned Kwan eight first-place votes from the nine judges for her short program, “Lyra Angelica” by the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

Unless she makes an unredeemable technical error, that also is the quality that will win Kwan the gold medal Friday night.

Skating to the center of the ice for the opening of her short program, Kwan said, “I saw the American flags and heard everybody cheering and screaming, and I thought, ‘God, I’m in heaven.’ ”

Not quite. But word is that the call from the top of the medal stand is local.

* BAD DREAM TEAM: U.S. men’s hockey team was eliminated in the quarterfinals by the Czech Republic. N1

* NOT FOR MALES ONLY: Girls and women are taking to the ice--on skates and in full hockey uniform--in droves. E1