Top Ice Dancers Hope to Become American Idols

Tanith Belbin and Ben Agosto make ice dancing palatable, infusing athleticism and verve into a discipline known mostly for melodrama and crooked judging.

Their silver medal at this year’s world championships was the best result for a U.S. ice dance team in 30 years, and they’re the best U.S. hope for a figure skating medal at the Turin Olympics.

But only if Belbin’s application for citizenship is granted in the next few months, and it’s plodding through a bureaucratic maze.

Belbin, a native of Kingston, Canada, isn’t due to get her U.S. citizenship until 2007. Legislators in her adopted home state of Michigan are working to accelerate the process, but time is running out for the duo to be eligible to represent the U.S. at the Winter Games.

“What we can do at this point is already done,” Belbin said Thursday, after she and Agosto performed the top-ranked compulsory dance at the Skate America Grand Prix competition.

“Now, we’ve just got to wait and see.”

Belbin, 21, and Agosto, a 23-year-old Chicagoan, know their Turin chances are slim.

“The question of whether or not we can go to the Olympics hasn’t affected how we train or how we’re approaching this season,” Agosto said. “If the Olympics does happen for us, that would be great. We’ll definitely be ready and we’ll go give it our all, but definitely the world championships is our main goal.”

With Belbin suffering from bronchitis on Thursday, the duo wasn’t as energetic as usual. Isabelle Delobel and Olivier Schoenfelder of France had a higher score for technical elements, 18.22 to 18.00, but Belbin and Agosto got a higher program component score, 18.73 to 18.21, for a total of 36.73 to 36.43. The program component score rates skating skills, timing, performance and interpretation. It’s part of the new scoring system adopted after the Salt Lake City judging scandal.

“We tested the waters a little bit,” Belbin said, “and now we feel we can kind of let loose.”

Japan’s Daisuke Takahashi let loose in the men’s short program and was the leader, even though he fell on a triple axel and lost a point. A student who trains in his homeland and in Simsbury, Conn., Takahashi had the highest program score and a total of 69.10.

Kevin Van der Perren of Belgium, who landed a spectacular quadruple toe loop-triple toe loop combination jump, was second with 68.79 points. World bronze medalist Evan Lysacek, who trains in El Segundo, was third with 67.75 points.

“Last year was very bad,” said Takahashi, referring to his 15th-place finish in the world championships. “I didn’t practice enough.”

Salt Lake City bronze medalist Tim Goebel was sixth, with 58.72 points, reflecting a fall on his combination jump. He said he has been bothered by a sore left knee, which he attributed to additional training he does to perfect moves that will score big in the new judging system. Hip injuries that forced Michelle Kwan and Sasha Cohen out of this event could also stem from training so much, he said.

“When you’re increasing your training time by 25 or 30% a day, five days, a week, that’s a lot of extra training,” he said. “A lot of us that had success in the past learned how to pace a long program and spread things out and when to rest and have a down time. But now we don’t have that luxury anymore and it’s really making a difference. It’s really showing up in injuries in some of the top skaters.”

Lysacek, in his third season of training with Frank Carroll and Ken Congemi in El Segundo, said his chronic hip injury wasn’t a problem Thursday. Nor was remembering his goal: He wrote the words, “I skate clean programs” on the back of his left hand.

“It’s an affirmation,” said Lysacek, who has a chance to make that come true when the men skate their long program today.

In the pairs event, Rena Inoue and John Baldwin Jr. of Santa Monica were third after the short program with 54.84 points. Dan Zhang and Hao Zhang of China were first at 59.90, with Marcy Hinzmann and Aaron Parchem of Bloomfield Hills, Mich., second with a personal-best 55.00 points.

Baldwin fell on their side-by-side triple lutz jumps, but the duo got points for performing a tough Level 4 lift.

“We’re not afraid to take a risk because we’re the team that has to try as hard as possible,” Inoue said.