High School Kid Restores Joy to the Games

A prone, clammy, gasping, Winter Olympics was resuscitated Thursday by a high school kid with the nerve to simply skate to the middle of its chest and start pounding.

Pounding through the cynicism.

Pounding through the crybabies.

Pounding so bravely and brilliantly, nobody could argue.

Sarah Hughes is the 2002 Olympic women’s figure skating champion, and, pardon the language, there’s not a damn thing the Russians can say about it.

Nor the Canadians. Nor the South Koreans. Nor any other nation that, before Thursday night, turned what should be the height of sport into a darkened whine cellar.

Sarah Hughes is the Olympic champion, and these Games stand united today, finally, behind a 16-year-old kid who showed there is still room here for giant leaps in final moments that even fur-lined judges cannot ignore.

She didn’t just snatch away a gold medal.

She snatched it minutes before officials pulled it out of the box, snatched in the middle of a triple flip while reaching over the shoulders of arguably the three best women skaters in the world.

She grabbed like nobody has grabbed it before, maybe the biggest upset in Olympic figure skating history, fourth to first in four breathtaking minutes.

We’ll let her say it. She said it immediately after her long program, mouthing the words in the middle of the Salt Lake Ice Center while a blizzard of flowers and animals and gratitude fell to the ice around her.

She said it better than anyone.

“Oh my God.”

Were you watching her? Were you crying?

People in the press box were crying. Fans in the stands were crying. Hardened skating officials were crying.

Unlike the many maudlin stories of these Games, those weren’t tears of sadness or joy, but of renewal.

That somebody barely fourth place after Tuesday’s short program and seemingly out of medal contention could skate like she still believed she could be a champion....

That a kid with a floppy haircut and goofy grin would be unafraid to stare down the judges and their preconceptions and their scams....

That somebody would challenge the system on its biggest and brightest night....

Now that was something.

Hughes said it to those judges again and again, four minutes solid, with the first pair of triple-triple combinations in Olympic history, with a spinning finish that turned her into a perfect violet blur.

You want to prove you’re impartial? Then make me your champion.

Amazingly, people were crying even though the top three skaters after the short program had yet to skate.

Hughes was that good.

Then, beginning with Sasha Cohen, the final three skaters were not nearly as good.

Cohen, the Laguna Niguel teenager who had never been in this position in a world-class event before, finally showed it.

She was clearly uncomfortable during a warmup session that looked more like a skating lesson, as she picked her way carefully and slowly around the ice.

When it was her turn to skate, she lasted less than a minute before hitting the ice on a triple-combination, and that was that.

Meanwhile, watching on television in the bowels of the arena , holding hands with coach Robin Wagner, the Long Island kid was surely thinking what the 15,000 fans were thinking.

One down and two to go.

Next up, Kwan, who was cheered like a champion, but who immediately showed the same caution that seemed ominous in her first-place short program.

You know what those in other sports always say about injuries occurring more often to those who play it safe?

In a different sort of way, it happened here.

Forty seconds into her program, she doubled-footed a triple jump. Then, at 2:19, she missed on a triple-flip and hit the ice.

She finished strong, even threw in a unplanned triple jump at the end, but it was too late, and she knew it.

“It was the worst I’ve skated in a while,” she said.

Stunned by a teenager for the second consecutive Olympics--remember Tara Lipinski?--Kwan’s night went from worst to worse as she tearfully crossed the ice after the event to stand on the bronze-medal podium.

Although she mostly choked them back, they were clearly tears of sadness. But she kept her cool and showed her trademark class, graciously congratulating the top two skaters.

The final skater, Russia’s Irina Slutskaya, was not nearly so gracious.

As it was written in this space, she was probably the best skater in the short program. But clearly, on Thursday, she never found the same groove.

She made several mistakes. Her program didn’t flow. Several times she seemed off balance or uncertain. She didn’t grab for the gold.

This being the biggest moment of the life of a skater who has never won world championship, such tentativeness is certainly defensible.

But her behavior afterward was not.

Mere hours after a Russian delegation threatened to pull their team out of town if they weren’t treated fairly, Slutskaya unfairly and cheaply stoked the fire.

She thought her presentation marks were low, and wouldn’t stop talking about it.

“Interesting thing about these Olympic Games, I’m obviously not the only Russian who has suffered here,” she said immediately after her skate.

Later, she added, “I have a shock ... it’s a shame.”

When asked about her delegation’s charges of overall unfairness, she said, “That’s very interesting too.”

This space defended the Russian pair skaters against the awful, precedent-setting decision that forced them to later share their gold medal with the Canadians.

But Thursday night was different. Slutskaya needed to close her mouth and listen to the philosophy of a champion.

“I didn’t think I had a chance of a gold, much less a medal,” Hughes said. “I didn’t even think about the medal. I skated because I love to skate. I just let everything go.”

In other words?

Faster, higher, stronger.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com.