Nikodinov Is a Leader in So Many Other Areas

It was like stepping to the plate after Barry Bonds.

It was like walking down the fairway behind Tiger Woods.

At 7:10 p.m. Saturday, all the air had been sucked out of the biggest room in town.

The woman who had spent two months catching her breath gasped.

Following her heart had been easy.

But now Angela Nikodinov had to follow Michelle Kwan.

The echoes of a standing ovation wafting down the Staples Center hallways. Piles of stuffed yellow toys freshly plowed from the ice. The announcement of two 6.0 scores bouncing off the boards.

Hey, you there, you in fourth place, you who are still grieving the recent death of your coach, you with the wobbly knees and puffy eyes.

Your turn.

“It was hard,” said Nikodinov. “I’ve skated right after Michele before, so no excuses, but when you hear those 6.0s and all the cheering.... “

Hard. Then awkward. Then ugly. Then impossible.

At 7:14 p.m. Saturday, the best story at the U.S. Figure Skating championships became the most sadly predictable.

Angela Nikodinov, the San Pedro woman struggling to overcome to loss of teacher and best friend Elena Tcherkasskaia, could not.

The woman recently transformed into one of the world’s best skaters wasn’t even one of the three best in her country.

The woman who was supposed to be the perfect Olympic story will only compete in Salt Lake City if somebody better breaks a bone.

A happy ending became just another ending.

“I didn’t really hold it together,” she said quietly afterward.

In a perfect world, she does, beating Kwan and finishing first.

In a fair world, she at least summons the strength to move up one spot from her fourth-place finish and qualify for the Games.

But for all its eye shadow and lace, the figure skating world is the real one.

“You can say, ‘Hey, I’m just going to just go for it,’” Nikodinov said. “But you have to be in the right physical shape to go for it.”

And she wasn’t. Loss had sapped her energy, inactivity had taken her strength.

In the real world Saturday, Angela Nikodinov sputtered, then stalled.

In the end, she was neither ecstatic nor enraged, but simply exhausted.

“I’m just kind of glad this is over with,” she said.

The first half of her four-minute free skate, she soared.

Sort of like her life before Nov. 12.

She hit a triple lutz. Hit a triple toe loop. Hit a triple flip.

“Then, at the 50% mark, it shut down,” explained her new coach, Frank Carroll.

Sort of like her life after Nov. 12.

She fell on a triple loop. Doubled a triple salchow. Doubled a triple lutz. Singled a triple-toe loop.

She was like a baseball player who, after hitting what could be an inside-the-park homer to win the game, begins limping from exhaustion after rounding second.

Nikodinov was tagged out of the Olympics even before she had a chance to round third. You wanted to find any excuse to cheer, but it was difficult to even watch.

“I believed I could do it,” she said. “But at some point, it doesn’t matter how strong I feel inside. I have to have to be that strong physically.”

How bad was it? When asked to put herself in Nikodinov’s position afterward, third-place finisher Sarah Hughes couldn’t even bear to speculate.

“I wouldn’t want to have to face that,” Hughes said. “I would not want to put myself in that position if I didn’t have to.”

As of Nov. 12, Nikodinov didn’t have a choice.

That was when Tcherkasskaia died of pancreatic cancer.

Nikodinov didn’t even know her coach was seriously ill.

This was the coach who turned her into this country’s third-best skater at last year’s Nationals, and the fifth-best skater at the worlds.

Nikodinov wasn’t in championship shape? Of course she wasn’t.

Between recovering from the shock of Tcherkasskaia’s death and mourning her loss, she essentially skated for more than two months without a coach.

“I’ve had a lot of changes recently adjusting to new training,” she said. “It all takes time and, unfortunately, it had to happen this late in the season.”

It happened so late, sometimes Nikodinov still has a hard time believing its real.

Tcherkasskaia was supposed to be leaning on the boards Saturday night, warmly embracing Nikodinov with her huge eyes and expressive voice.

Instead, she was a cold neon light high above the rink, oddly enough on a scoreboard that still listed her as Nikodinov’s coach.

“I didn’t see that,” Nikodinov said. “Actually, I’m glad I didn’t see that.”

While skating, Nikodinov wore the tiny blue eye necklace that was given to her by Tcherkasskaia. Called “the evil eye,” it was supposed to ward off nasty spirits.

On Saturday, it looked like a tiny, harmless stone.

And watching the other skaters backstage, you wondered.

Kwan came off the ice, found herself standing next to estranged coach Carroll and backed into a corner so the camera wouldn’t catch them in the same frame.

You thought, at least Kwan had a choice.

Hughes came off the ice, somebody asked her about finishing third instead of second, and she started crying.

You thought, through everything Saturday, Nikodinov didn’t cry once.

She made no excuses. She offered no alibis. She even tried to console onlookers who greeted her with sad faces, saying, “Why so somber?”

She said that, even at 21, she hasn’t given up hopes of making the Olympics when she’s 25.

“I will go back to work,” she said. “I will get better.”

For all the messiness Saturday, that is the lasting memory of Angela Nikodinov’s skate.

Not the part of about her falling. The part about her getting back up.

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