Kwan gets, deservedly, her shot at Olympics

ST. LOUIS — The words didn't appear anywhere on the official announcement. But U.S. Figure Skating's decision to send Michelle Kwan to the Turin Olympics could have been summed up rather tidily: No-brainer.

Kwan, 25, the nine-time U.S. champion, never hit the ice this week to defend her title and earn a shot at that Last Big Prize — an Olympic gold medal.

She didn't have to, thanks to a 20-3 vote by U.S. Figure Skating's international committee. That group put Kwan on the Turin Olympic squad late Saturday night, along with Sasha Cohen and Kimmie Meissner, who finished first and second at the U.S. championships, and Johnny Weir, Evan Lysacek and Matt Savoie, the top three men's finishers from earlier in the day.

Call it a career mulligan, with a catch: A panel of five skating honchos will review Kwan's full short and long programs by Jan. 27, making a final judgment that she's ready to go medal chasing. That was her idea, not theirs.

Not everyone will celebrate the choice — especially odd-teen-out Emily Hughes, whose third-place finish Saturday night would have been good enough to earn a trip to the Olympics in a normal year. Her older sister, Sarah, in fact, was on the same rung of the nationals podium four years ago, and went on to win gold in Salt Lake City.

But this was not a normal year, and Kwan has never been a normal skater.

Her petition to join the team in spite of a groin pull that kept her away from St. Louis was issued, she assured, only because she's convinced she can win.

That might be a reach. Kwan clearly knows her body better than anyone else, but other skaters are quietly skeptical that she will be a medal contender given her season of physical therapy and canceled flights.

"I'm very confident in how my body is reacting," said Kwan, adding that she already has resumed training.

U.S. Figure Skating officials reiterate that the U.S. Championships, even in an Olympic year, do not serve as an "Olympic trial" per se.

For her part, Cohen grabbed the prize that's long eluded her, thrilling a crowd of 13,247 at Savvis Center by winning her first national title with an overall score of 199.18. Cohen, a four-time runner-up to Kwan in this event, skated cleanly except for a stumble on a triple toe loop-triple Salchow combination.

But this event is just one of six they use to decide which three U.S. skaters are most likely to wind up on a Wheaties box.

Kwan competed in only one of those, but it was a world championship, where she finished fourth last spring. That's tough to ignore by a committee that exists to amass hardware.

Granted, sending Kwan to Turin along with fresh-faced newcomer Meissner and two-time world runner-up Cohen — likely America's best and brightest medal hope — has a lot to do with TV ratings, endorsements and plain old dollar signs. But it's also about common sense — and true entitlement.

The list of superlatives about Kwan could fill this page. But before anyone starts waving the technical criteria for Olympic acceptance, focus on this one: Kwan is one of a small handful of athletes in modern times who has actually transcended her sport.

She isn't a player in this game. She is the game.

For more than a decade, through skullduggery by tire-iron-wielding thugs and greasy-palmed judges, Kwan has almost single-handedly upheld the dignity of a sport threatening to implode under its own pretentiousness.

It began with the grace by which she accepted a decision, at age 13, to be demoted from a second-place finish at the 1994 nationals to Olympic alternate after the knee-capping of Nancy Kerrigan. It continued all the way until last January in Portland, when she won her ninth U.S. title, tying her for the all-time record by Maribel Vinson.

Time after time, title after title, she has emerged to grab a reluctant nation by the nose and turn its head back toward the ice.

It is indisputable that Kwan has yet to prove herself a champion under the new international scoring system that others, such as Cohen, have quickly mastered. It is indisputable that she missed the entire fall Grand Prix season with injuries. It's indisputable that she has never skated her best at the Olympics, and that America's last two Olympic gold medalists were up-and-coming teens.

And it is just as indisputable that in the court of public opinion, none of that really matters.

No athlete goes on forever. Michelle Kwan surely is savvy enough to know that one of these seasons on the ice — if not this one, perhaps the next — will be her last.

But nobody should stand in the way of her final shot at the one prize she has never claimed.

Even if it's a longshot.

Ron Judd: 206-464-8280 or rjudd@seattletimes.com_