Kwan Again Sits on Top of World

By HELENE ELLIOTT

March 25, 2001 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

VANCOUVER, Canada —

Michelle Kwan couldn’t bear to look at the TV monitor, couldn’t bear to see if Irina Slutskaya’s marks would surpass hers.

She had pumped her fists and cried at the end of her four-minute free skating program, sure it was the best she could do. But would it be good enough to vault her past Slutskaya, who had beaten her twice this season?

While she paced along the corridor leading from the ice at GM Place to the locker room, her coach, Frank Carroll, kept his eyes riveted to the monitor. After a few interminable seconds, Slutskaya’s marks flashed on screen, and the one number that mattered most--the 1 next to her name for the overall standings--sprang onto the screen.

Someone yelled to Kwan to look at the monitor, and she ran to see for herself that she had won the world figure skating championship for the second consecutive year and fourth time overall, As she hugged Carroll, the tears began anew.

“I can’t believe it’s happening four times,” said the 20-year-old Torrance native, whose four world titles are second among U.S. women only to the five won by Carol Heiss from 1956-60. With six world medals--four gold and two silver--she tied Heiss, Dick Button, Hayes Alan Jenkins and Todd Eldredge for the most world medals won by a U.S. skater.

“I think I had a lot of confidence tonight when I went out there,” Kwan added. “Make it or break it, that was my philosophy.”

She made it her night with a stunning performance to “Song of the Black Swan” and “Lento Maestoso” that included seven triple jumps, a lovely spiral sequence and a final flying spin that was a beautiful blur.

Slutskaya, who led after the short program, did a triple-triple-double jump sequence but stepped out of the second part of another triple-triple-double attempt in her “Don Quixote” routine. She also had another wobbly landing.

Kwan was rated first by seven judges, second by one and third by another; Slutskaya got two firsts, five seconds and two thirds.

Although Slutskaya fled the “kiss-and-cry” area after realizing Kwan had prevailed and wept backstage, she insisted that she was not disconcerted by finishing second for the third time. She was also the runner-up in 1998 and 2000.

“I’m very happy with how I skated,” she said through a translator. “This program was my best free skate of the season, and that’s what I’m happy about.

“I skated and did everything. The judges give the marks. I will continue to skate. This was not terrible. At the end, I didn’t think about winning or losing.”

Sarah Hughes of Great Neck, N.Y., moved from fourth to third with a saucy performance to “Don Quixote,” but Angela Nikodinov of San Pedro dropped from third to fifth after falling on a triple salchow, reducing a planned triple lutz to a double and two-footing the landing of a triple toe loop in her lyrical “Sleeping Beauty” program.

Maria Butyrskaya of Russia, the 1999 world champion, moved up from fifth to fourth.

For Hughes, 15, the evening was pure magic.

“If you want it, you have to go and grab it. You can’t be safe,” said Hughes, who was seventh at her first world competition, in 1999, and fifth last year. “I gave everything. Everything I had, I put in that performance. I couldn’t even bow right away. I couldn’t breathe.”

Nikodinov, whose previous best finish at the world meet was ninth last year, had been skating well.

“I never fall in competition,” she said. “There was a lot of pressure, obviously, and sometimes in the end it just doesn’t happen. I feel like I’ve proved something to everyone and to myself. It was a decent long program. It wasn’t a disaster.”

Kwan felt she had much to prove too.

Trying to increase the technical content of her programs to combat Slutskaya’s technical excellence, she tried to add a triple salchow-triple loop combination to her repertoire but stopped working on it when she developed a sore back before the U.S. competition in January. “I sort of lost confidence through the season,” she said. “I just didn’t believe in myself.”

Although she won her fifth U.S. title, she lost to Slutskaya at the Grand Prix Final in Tokyo last month, and her doubts were rekindled. Would she need that second triple-triple to win and to sustain her hopes of winning the Olympic gold medal that slipped through her hands and onto the neck of Tara Lipinski at Nagano in 1998?

She didn’t do the triple salchow-triple loop. But what she did, including a triple loop-triple loop, she did with precision, emotion and a sense of fulfillment.

“It’s been a difficult year,” Kwan said. “Starting off, I had a few doubts. ‘Am I going to make it through the season strong?’ The last two months I asked myself, ‘Is it too late to get prepared?’

“Hopefully, I don’t move from here and I keep going at this level.”

The level she occupies has been matched by few skaters.

Only three other women have won more world titles: Sonja Henie of Norway won 10; Heiss and Herma Jaross-Szabo of Austria won five. Kwan’s four matches Lily Kronberger of Hungary and Katarina Witt of Germany.

Kwan is aware of another historical note--each of the last four women’s Olympic champions was the reigning world champion when she won. Witt won the world title in 1987 and won gold at Calgary in 1988, Kristi Yamaguchi won the world title in 1991 and the Olympics in 1992 at Albertville, Oksana Baiul burst onto the scene by winning the 1993 world title and won gold in 1994 at Lillehammer, and Lipinski defeated Kwan to win the 1997 world title and the 1998 Olympic gold.

“I thought about that,” Kwan said. “But you can’t go by what happened in the history books. Next year is something different.”

But she hasn’t skated this long, juggled school and skating and worked to become what Carroll called “a lean, mean fighting machine” to finish second. “You have to think why you do this,” she said, “and the answer always is, it’s fun. If you want something, there are sacrifices and you have to work to get it.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

World Figure Skating

Final women’s results, with name, hometown, factored replacements and final point total:

1. Michelle Kwan, Torrance: 1.0 2.6

2. Irina Slutskaya, Russia: 2.0 3.0

3. Sarah Hughes, Great Neck, N.Y.: 4.0 7.2

4. Maria Butyrskaya, Russia: 3.0 7.6

5. Angela Nikodinov, San Pedro: 5.0 8.0

6. Viktoria Volchkova, Russia: 6.0 10.4

7. Fumie Suguri, Japan: 7.0 13.2

8. Elena Liashenko, Ukraine: 8.0 15.4

9. Vanessa Gusmeroli, France: 10.0 16.0