A NEW LEASE ON ICE

Rena Inoue hadn’t felt good for a while. It was 1998, and she’d developed a cough, a persistent one that rattled her 4-foot-10, 95-pound frame.

“And I noticed I got tired easily, much more than I should,” said Inoue, who grew up in Japan and had been dispatched to Lake Arrowhead by her country’s figure skating federation in 1996 to further her career.

“I thought I had pneumonia or something, so I went to the doctor and checked it.”

Her doctor saw a shadow on the X-ray “that didn’t really look like pneumonia,” she said.

What it did look like was lung cancer, the disease that had killed her father, Masahiko, a year earlier.

“The very, very beginning,” said Inoue, who turned 22 in October 1998. “The doctor said, ‘You’re very lucky.’ Normally people don’t know they have it at that stage.

“I was kind of OK when I heard it,” she said. “I mean, I wasn’t happy, but my doctor said he’d found it early. He didn’t take it seriously. He didn’t say, ‘You have to face your death.’ ”

A six-month course of chemotherapy banished the disease, though she had to stay off the ice for a year and was cautioned that a cold or pneumonia would be dangerous because of her compromised immune system. She went for checkups every six months for the first five years after she was treated but goes once a year now.

“The hardest part was telling my mother,” she said of her widowed parent, Reiko. “It had been just a year since my dad died. I said, ‘I just cannot tell her.’ But I told her. She definitely was freaking out.”

Inoue, who competed at the 1992 and 1994 Olympics for Japan and became a U.S. citizen last September, rarely discusses her illness. She told only a few relatives and a close friend in Japan, she said, but word filtered out to the Japanese media, which still track her every move.

John Baldwin Jr., her on- and off-ice partner, joked on Tuesday that in the two weeks before they left for Turin, Japanese reporters had been to their Santa Monica home every day to chronicle her new life as a two-time U.S. pairs champion and three-time Olympian.

“If somebody asks me, I don’t hide,” she said of her cancer, “but it’s not something I would tell anyone.”

Ask her, though, about the throw triple axel she and Baldwin performed in winning the U.S. title last month, the first landed in competition anywhere in the world, and she’s effusive.

Ask her about the duo’s decision to try the difficult throw in their short program Saturday to enhance their chances of being in medal contention in Monday’s finale, and her soft, breathy voice gains strength.

“We wouldn’t do it unless we feel comfortable,” she said. “You don’t do something if you don’t feel really confident.

“As for the risks, life is about taking risks.”

Inoue has shown she’s not averse to taking chances.

She had been reluctant to agree when Baldwin’s father, John Sr., called her and asked her to try skating with his son, who had quit singles skating and was contemplating quitting altogether. She agreed during the summer of 2000 and they met at Paramount Iceland, launching a partnership that has brought her back to the Olympics for a third time and given Baldwin his first Olympic experience.

“I would never have continued skating if I hadn’t found Rena,” he said. “She was my role model on the ice, but the more time I spent with her, the more I wanted to be like her.”

They clicked instantly. They finished 11th at their first national competition, in 2001, but moved up to fourth in 2002 and third in 2003. They won their first title in 2004 but slipped to second in 2005.

With an Olympic berth at stake, they landed the throw triple axel at the U.S. championships and earned an automatic nomination to the Turin team. Marcy Hinzmann and Aaron Parchem, who train in Detroit, won the other U.S. pair spot.

“Rena is one of the best girls in the world at doing throws,” said their coach, Peter Oppegard, whose third-place performance with Jill Watson at the 1988 Calgary Games was the last medal won by a U.S. pair.

Oppegard said Inoue and Baldwin had suggested the throw triple axel, which has a hefty base value of 7.5 points in the new scoring system. It’s an especially difficult throw because it’s the only one in which the female partner takes off in a forward direction and must perform 3 1/2 revolutions in the air before she lands.

Inoue and Baldwin started working on it two years ago but a bad fall by Inoue discouraged them from reviving it until last summer.

“I was not for it at first because I’m a coach, and as a coach, I play the odds,” Oppegard said. “They convinced me over time. They’re so solid and confident, I think the confidence will overcome the odds.”

Inoue knows about overcoming odds. Not even she would have dreamed she’d be an Olympian for a third time, for a different country and with a new partner to guide her on the ice and through her life.

“It’s been 12 years since my last Olympics, so I just feel like really brand-new,” she said. “The first time I walked into the Olympic village, I was saying, ‘Oh, wow!’ I flashed back to all the memories I had.

“I’m just so thrilled to be here and excited to be here.”

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THE FACTS

* When: Friday-Feb. 26.

* Where: Turin, Italy.

* Opening ceremony: Friday, 8 p.m.-midnight PST (Ch. 4).

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Inoue, Baldwin on ice

The competitive record in pairs figure skating of Rena Inoue and John Baldwin Jr.:

2001 -- Pacific Coast sectional, third; U.S. championships, 11th.

2002 -- Southwest Pacific regional, first; U.S. championships, fourth; Four Continents Championships, seventh; Cup of Russia, fifth; Cup on Ice, fifth.

2003 -- Southwest Pacific regional, first; U.S. championships, third; world championships, 10th; Cup of China, fifth; NHK Trophy, fourth.

2004 -- U.S. championships, first; Four Continents Championships, fourth; world championships, 10th; Skate America, third; NHK Trophy, fourth; Grand Prix, sixth.

2005 -- U.S. championships, second; world championships, 11th; Skate America, second; Trophee Eric Bompard, fourth.

2006 -- U.S. championships, first; Four Continents Championships, first.

Source: U.S. Figure Skating