Kwan Does Just Enough

Michelle Kwan skated off the ice after her long program to face the stern countenance of coach Frank Carroll.

“You know what he said to me?” Kwan said. “He said, ‘So are you going to come at 8:30 Monday?’ And he was dead serious.”

Kwan and Carroll compromised on a 10:45 a.m. practice at HealthSouth training center in El Segundo. After all, Kwan won the long program and the Skate America women’s title Saturday, even if it was far from the best routine the three-time world champion has done.

And even if Sarah Hughes did six triples to Kwan’s five and did a tricky triple salchow-triple loop combination.

“Altitude,” Kwan said, still gasping after a program in which she two-footed the landing of her opening triple loop, simplified her triple toe-triple toe combination to a triple-double and did a double flip instead of a triple flip.

“It was a tough and cautious beginning of the program. But as it progressed, I got a little stronger.”

She also had presence of mind to enhance the technical content by doing a triple toe loop toward the middle of the program, which was “Song of the Black Swan,” by Heitor Villa-Lobos. “It’s planned if I don’t do the triple-triple, which I didn’t feel solid enough to do,” she said. “It kind of ruins the effect of the slow part. It’s better if I do it the way it’s planned, but it doesn’t always happen that way. . . .

“I’m pretty happy, but there’s so many expectations I have. I want to be better than last year’s worlds. It’s hard, because I gave myself time off and this is the start of the season. Every year I want to be better.”

Hughes, a 15-year-old high school sophomore from Great Neck, N.Y., skated perhaps the best four-minute routine of her career. Wearing a red flower in her hair in keeping with her music, “Don Quixote,” Hughes did a demanding triple salchow-triple loop combination with only a slight bobble and was self-assured in hitting her other four triple jumps. She also connected her moves nicely, rather than attempting to wow the judges with her obvious jumping ability.

“It’s very exciting because it was my first time out there and I wanted to show everybody my new program,” said Hughes, who missed eight weeks of training after breaking her arm in June. “When I kept landing my jumps it kept getting more exciting. I really can’t ask for more.”

Elena Sokolova of Russia was third. Angela Nikodinov of San Pedro, who trains in Troy, Mich., moved up from seventh to fifth despite completing only one of her six planned triple jumps and simplifying the rest to double jumps. She also didn’t complete the rotation of her double axel, which cost her on her technical merit scores.

In ice dancing, world silver medalists Barbara Fusar-Poli and Maurizio Margaglio of Italy won their second successive Skate America title. Margarita Drobiazko and Povilas Vanagas of Lithuania were second, followed by Shae-Lynn Bourne and Victor Kraatz of Canada. U.S. champions Naomi Lang and Peter Tchernyshev of the U.S., fifth after the compulsory and original dances, retained that spot. The other U.S. duo, Beata Handra and Charles Sinek, moved up from seventh to sixth.

Lang and Tchernyshev skated a spirited program to violin music, Air on G String by Bach, and Storm by Vanessa May. Their composition marks ranged from 5.2 to 5.5, but their presentation marks ranged from 5.4 to 5.7.

“For our first competition, especially at altitude, we’re happy,” said Lang, a Michigan native who has learned Russian to better communicate with her Russian-born partner and their coach, Alexander Zhulin. “We’re just happy we skated pretty clean.”

Tchernyshev said he and Lang, who finished eighth at the world championships, want to improve their speed. “We didn’t do any mistakes,” he said. “We’ll make a couple of adjustments in the original dance.”

Tchernyshev also said he hopes to have his U.S. citizenship before the U.S. championships in January. He has been waiting six years. “There was a delay because they had some doubts about my driving record. That’s cleared up,” he said. “I had 14 speeding tickets, but that’s in six years. It’s just that after practice my foot gets heavy.”