Victorious Kwan Close to Perfection

For once, fans and judges were in agreement on how to score the performance that decided the 1998 U.S. women’s figure skating championship Saturday night.

“Six! Six! Six! Six!” chanted the crowd of 19,082 at the CoreStates Center, setting and stage for Michelle Kwan’s historic winning long program.

“Six, six, six, six, six, five-point-nine, six, six, six,” replied the judges.

Eight perfect scores for artistic presentation out of nine--a first for any skater, male or female, in a long program in the 85-year history of the U.S. Figure Skating Championships.

Add those to the seven perfect artistic scores Kwan received for her short program Thursday and that’s 15 marks of 6.0 out of a possible 18 at these nationals.

All done on a left foot with a stress fracture so painful that Kwan was unable to skate for a month, unable to compete for two months, and unable to land a triple toe loop with a straight face--no wince, no grimace--until Saturday.

Kwan pulled that one off too, concluding a remarkable performance by throwing in an unplanned triple toe loop at the very end of her program--nailing it with such ease and precision that Kwan’s coach, Frank Carroll, clasped a hand to his chest, feigning a heart attack.

Or, as Kwan put it, in the giddy verbiage of an excited 17-year-old teenager:

“I went for it, I landed it and I thought, ‘Cool.’ ”

Kwan said she felt as if she were “flying” on the ice, calling the program “the performance of my life.”

Carroll could not help but concur.

“Never in her life has she felt that way,” Carroll said. “My God, you can’t ask for more. Those are the highest scores anybody’s ever gotten.”

So many 6.0s, Kwan’s mind started reeling.

“I saw all those perfect 6.0s,” Kwan said, “and I started thinking, ‘What can I do to improve on this?’ ”

Kwan has a month to try to come with something, before her next competition, in Nagano, at the Winter Olympics.

Mind racing, adrenaline rush yet to subside, Kwan needed mere minutes to sketch together a few cursory ideas.

“I think we can squeeze in a few more triple jumps,” she volunteered. “I think I can smile a little more too.”

Kwan will be joined on the three-women U.S. team by Tara Lipinski, who rebounded from her pratfall in Thursday’s short program to skate a clean long program, and Nicole Bobek, who outskated Tonia Kwiatkowski for the third and final Olympic berth.

Lipinski, the 1997 U.S. and world champion, was fourth after the short program but jumped to second overall with a long program that included seven triple jumps--as many as Kwan--and receive four technical-merit grades of 5.9.

Bobek, the 1995 U.S. champion, had a flawed routine, bailing out of two planned combination jumps and failing to complete a combination with a triple jump. Still, she kept her feet throughout the entire four minutes, unlike Kwiatkowski, who fell twice.

Each member of the U.S. women’s team has a been national champion at least once, with Kwan a two-time winner (1996 and 1998), giving rise to a popular question during Saturday’s post-competition interview session:

Could there be an American sweep of the women’s figure skating medals in Nagano?

“From the performance you saw tonight from these girls, I think we have a great chance of being 1-2-3,” said Richard Callaghan, who coaches Lipinski.

Having watched Kwan defy the odds and the medical reports with a rousing, near-flawless short program two days earlier, the CoreStates Center crowd braced for Kwan’s free skate with anxious anticipation. From the moment she skated, dressed in a sky-blue velvet dress, to the center of the rink, waiting for the music to commence, Kwan was greeted with raucous applause and homemade signs bearing “We Love Michelle!” declarations.

“I saw all those those signs,” Kwan said, “and I wanted to melt right there on the ice.”

Then, the first strains of “Lyra Angelica” filled the arena and Kwan was off on a performance that will be held up as the gold standard for future generations of figure skaters.

She hit her first two combinations convincingly--a triple-lutz, double-toe loop pairing, followed quickly by a triple-loop, double-loop combination--and her confidence, ever mercurial with the introspective Kwan, visibly soared.

Four more planned triple jumps were conquered as well, sending Kwan into the home stretch before she delighted the crowd with the improvised triple toe loop.

“By the end of the week, I was doing the triple-toe in practice and it wasn’t hurting,’ Kwan said.

“Tonight, I was just taking one thing at a time and making everything,” she said. “I was landing every jump with a smile. And then I started thinking, ‘OK, what do I have to do to nail this thing?’ ”

Kwan said she chose “Lyra Angelica” as her long-program musical accompaniment because “it reminds me of angels and clouds and the feeling of flying, like nothing can stop me.”

Nothing--not even a stress fracture--and no one--not even a pint-sized world champion by the name of Lipinski--could on this night.

Kwan knew it too.

“By the end of my program,” she said, “I was thinking, ‘I’m free . . . and I’m gone!’ ”

*

Earlier Saturday, Elizabeth Punsalan and Jerod Swallow won their fifth national championship in ice dance and their second trip to the Olympics, where they finished 15th in 1994. Jessica Joseph and Charles Butler, two-time U.S. junior champions, placed second to earn the other ice dance berth on the U.S. team.