The Main Event

It doesn’t matter now that Michelle Kwan doesn’t have a coach to sit beside her in the kiss-and-cry area.

Or that Russians Maria Butyrskaya and Irina Slutskaya endured inconsistent seasons.

Forget, too, Sarah Hughes’ flutzes and Sasha Cohen’s unsuccessful attempts to land a quadruple jump.

What matters is the way these women perform during the most pressure-packed 6 1/2 minutes of their lives: the 2 1/2 minutes of their short programs today at the Salt Lake Ice Center, and the 4-plus minutes of their long programs Thursday, which will determine the women’s Olympic figure skating champion.

Kwan, the four-time world champion and six-time U.S. champion, has history on her side as she pursues the gold medal she was favored to win four years ago at Nagano but narrowly lost to compatriot Tara Lipinski.

For starters, the 21-year-old Torrance native is the reigning women’s world champion, and each of the last four women’s gold medalists had won the world title the year before her Olympic triumph. Katarina Witt of East Germany began the streak by winning the 1987 world championship and the 1988 gold medal at Calgary. Next was Kristi Yamaguchi of the U.S., the 1991 world champion and 1992 Olympic gold medalist at Albertville.

Oksana Baiul of Ukraine won her only world title in 1993 and won gold at the 1994 Lillehammer Games, and Lipinski won her lone world championship in 1997 and followed by upsetting Kwan with an exuberant and technically demanding long program at the Nagano Games.

Also, at least one U.S. woman has won a medal at the last nine Olympics, since Peggy Fleming triumphed at Grenoble in 1968.

The U.S. women were last shut out in 1964, three years after a plane crash had killed the U.S. team en route to the world championships.

The U.S. women’s delegation at Salt Lake City is considered perhaps the best ever to compete at the Olympics, and for good reasons.

The leader, of course, is Kwan, who has two runner-up finishes at the world competition in addition to her four titles and her Nagano Olympic silver medal. After a tumultuous season in which she parted with longtime coach Frank Carroll and lost to Slutskaya and Hughes at Skate Canada, she seemed to right herself in winning the U.S. championship. And she has been far more relaxed in Salt Lake City than she was at Nagano, where a foot injury kept her from participating in the opening ceremony and a fear of illness kept her out of the Olympic Village.

Kwan has soaked up the entire Olympic experience this time, marching in the opening ceremony, meeting other athletes and loving every minute as she prepares for what she called “a great moment in my life.”

To be a golden moment, though, she will have to rise to the challenge of pulling off a triple-triple combination jump, which she hasn’t landed this season. She plans to do a triple toe loop-triple toe loop combination in her “Sheherezade” long program, her most reliable triple-triple, and is contemplating adding another triple-triple if she needs the points on her technical scores.

“The triple toe-triple toe is getting better,” she said this week. “I don’t know if I’ll do a triple lutz-triple loop. Looking at the men, I start thinking, ‘Why don’t I throw in another triple? Maybe a quad?’”

She was joking, but the ability to land a triple-triple could prove decisive.

And Hughes, the poised 16-year-old from Great Neck, N.Y., who was third at last year’s world championships, is planning two triple-triples in her “Daphnis et Chloe” long program.

Hughes and coach Robin Wagner have revised her program since the U.S. championships to add punch and more difficult elements. They also edited their excerpts of Ravel’s music to find a more dramatic ending.

“It adds a little more vibrance and shows off a little more her line, graceful quality and quickness,” Wagner said. “It gives her something new to work on, some freshness.”

Then there’s Cohen, the fiery 17-year-old from Laguna Niguel. She has never competed at the world championships, but her balletic grace and riveting performances at the U.S. championships suggest she can compete with her more experienced rivals.

“The three ladies are wonderful,” said John Nicks, Cohen’s coach.

Can they sweep the medals, a feat accomplished in Olympic figure skating only by the U.S. men’s trio of Hayes Alan Jenkins, Ronnie Robertson and David Jenkins at the 1956 Games? The home crowd, which has been passionate in its support of U.S. athletes throughout these Games, will certainly be on their side.

“Anything is possible,” Nicks said.

Butyrskaya, 29, could also be a factor. She was the 1999 world champion but finished third and fourth the next two years; she staged something of a comeback by winning the Nations Cup and Trophee Lalique Grand Prix events as well as the European title, but she lost to Slutskaya at the Russian championships.

Slutskaya, 23, is Kwan’s chief rival and the most likely obstacle to a U.S. medals sweep.

The Moscow native, shaken when Kwan rallied in the long program to defeat her at last year’s world championships, has always been solid technically. She has spent the past year working on her musicality and ever-so-subjective presentation skills--as well as her English.

“I work so hard on my artistic marks,” she said. “My first marks [for technique] are good. My second marks were smaller than the first. I just try to do better and better.”

Slutskaya defeated Kwan at the Goodwill Games in September and at the Masters of Figure Skating in October, but lost to Hughes at Skate Canada. She won the Cup of Russia title in November, but didn’t skate well; her victory over Kwan at December’s Grand Prix Final was less than convincing too. She followed that by winning the Russian national competition but fell twice in finishing second to Butyrskaya at the European championships.

“I was a little surprised on one side,” she said of her subpar performance at the European competition. “But on the second side, I was tired. I was surprised I fall on the triple flip....The newspapers in Russia, they try to explain to people my problems. ‘Irina lost the European title, and this is the end, the end of her career, the end of everything.’”

Slutskaya also said she hopes the anti-Russian sentiment that she said factored into the disputed pairs competition won’t affect her too. Russians Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze were steamrolled by public opinion, while Canadians Jamie Sale and David Pelletier were favored, she said.

“I don’t want to say Americans don’t like me too,” she said. “It doesn’t matter where you skate, it matters how you skate.”

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Today’s Short Program

Order of appearance for the five favorites.

5. Sarah Hughes,

United States

6. Sasha Cohen,

United States

11. Maria Butyrskaya,

Russia

12. Irina Slutskaya,

Russia

15. Michelle Kwan,

United States

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Required elements for each short program.

1. Double axel

2. One double or triple jump

3. One jump combination consisting of one double jump and a triple jump or two triple jumps

4. Flying spin

5. Layback or sideways leaning spin

6. Spin combination with only one change of foot and at least two changes of position

7. One spiral step sequence (serpentine, circular or oval or a combination of the two)

8. One step sequence (straight line, circular or serpentine)