This Will Put the Torch to U.S. Image

It was a day for red, white and ewww.

Under glorious skies whose silver linings perhaps hid an oncoming storm, the torch borne by the symbol of the U.S. Winter Olympic team was formally passed.

From class to crass.

From royal to rude.

From Kwan to Miller, which doesn’t Bode well for anyone.

Shortly before noon here, injury-twisted skater Michelle Kwan wisely announced her withdrawal from the Games.

Within the hour, the main stage finally belonging to him, manipulatively brash skier Bode Miller soared halfway into the orchestra pit with a fifth-place finish in the celebrated men’s downhill.

Said Kwan: “It was one of the toughest decisions I’ve had to make.”

Said Miller: “I absolutely skied the way I wanted to.... There was a moment of disappointment, then it went away.”

One was heartfelt, the other was haughty. One was racked by defeat, the other shrugged through it.

It’s a shame how, the moment one leaves, the other arrives, like a cool suntan before a nasty sunburn, and look for America to start itching.

The networks that pushed Kwan will now place an even larger lens on Miller. The sponsors who backed Kwan may hastily chase after Miller.

The American focus here will become just a little cruder, maybe a tad tackier, and let’s just hope this won’t mean an increase in drunken skiers or steroid advocates.

“I feel good, I feel ready,” Miller said, rather strangely, after he and 10th-place finisher Daron Rahlves turned the brilliant afternoon into yet another U.S. skiing bust.

That was, of course, Kwan’s problem. She was neither good, nor ready, and she knew it.

Yes, she should have quit. Yes, she probably should not have come here in the first place.

Because of injuries nagging and new, she completed only one jump perfectly in her opening Saturday practice. She missed three triple-flip attempts, falling on one.

She cut her workout short and left her ensuing answers vague, and most folks just knew she was too smart to continue on a path of Olympic humiliation.

She made the tough call, the smart call, the right call.

“I don’t think, in my heart, I could be my best,” she said Sunday morning.

And then, in a typically dignified Kwan move, she took a flight back to Los Angeles so she wouldn’t be a distraction.

All of which leaves the heart of the U.S. Olympic movement with a hole big enough for ice fishing. It is a chilly void that Miller just cannot fill.

While watching that scruffy guy in the Spider-Man tights racing around barriers like a human Pac-Man, think about this:

Kwan has been in the spotlight for more than a decade, and not once has she exploited or exhausted it.

Miller has been in the spotlight 10 minutes and already he has acknowledged that he skied drunk, then claimed that steroids weren’t all that bad, while accusing Lance Armstrong and Barry Bonds of using them.

Kwan is so beloved by fellow skaters that even Emily Hughes, who will the join the Olympic team in her place, would not criticize her power play last month.

Miller has so distracted his fellow skiers that mogul star Jeremy Bloom has already ripped him here, and female teammate Lindsey Kildow refused to discuss him, saying, “It’s a touchy subject.”

Kwan’s final speech was watched by many who couldn’t stop gushing.

“Michelle Kwan means more to the USOC than maybe any athlete that’s ever performed for the USOC,” said Peter Ueberroth, chairman of the U.S. Olympic Committee. “She’s a leader, she’s been gracious, she’s somebody to cherish forever.”

Miller’s first race of these Olympics, meanwhile, was watched by thousands whose feelings were decidedly mixed.

“There was a lot of talk, a lot of build-up, then what happened?” asked Greg Lemon, a Denver architect sitting in the stands at the swerving Kandahar Banchetta slope.

“There’s all this talk about Miller being the bad boy of the downhill ... that’s ridiculous. We came to see somebody on the podium, and nobody is on the podium.”

Even the backdrop for their appearances was backward.

Miller skied up here in these wondrous marshmallow slices known as the Alps.

Kwan held her news conference down in that spewing engine block of a city known as Turin.

It should have been Kwan up here in the heavens she helped decorate with five world championships and two Olympic medals, and Miller down there with all the other noise pollution.

“Miller should just stop talking and start skiing,” Lemon said.

Miller, who lost despite being a former world champion in the downhill, should be better in some of his four other races, particularly Tuesday’s combined.

Don’t be surprised if he wins a gold medal before he leaves here. But also don’t be surprised if he says something hypocritical about it.

He’ll say he hates the attention, then excuse himself to update his website or add a foreword to his autobiography.

He’ll say the media soil his sporting purity with their obsession with winning, but apparently that obsession is OK, as long as Nike pays him for it.

Just wondering, when was Kwan last anything but fully cooperative with the media, even when they were ripping her?

As difficult news conferences Saturday and Sunday proved, Kwan has always been accountable, saying goodbye as elegantly as she once said hello.

Under the old scoring system, give her exit a perfect 6.0.

One can only hope Miller can at least improve to par.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.