Filip Bondy

I don’t think Michelle Kwan will ever stand on a medals platform again. I don’t think she will ever land a triple-anything combination again, and I don’t think she will impress judges nearly enough with her graceful spins and sweeping spirals to be a factor at the Turin Games.

But that doesn’t matter one bit. Kwan, a nine-time U.S. champ and five-time world champion, earned her ice time a long time ago. She deserves to go to the Olympics, if she wants. And if that appearance turns into some great embarrassment, then it’s on her, not us. The way it should be.

Right now, if you asked most Americans to identify the likely Olympic stars next month at Turin, they would mention Kwan, and then a few might remember Sasha Cohen or Bode Miller.

Beyond that, you’d get blank stares or sheer indifference. There may come a time when names like Jeremy Bloom and Chad Hedrick mean something, but their spotlight will be brief and they all will become very difficult trivia questions soon enough, in the realm of disposable heroes and heroines.

Which is just one reason why it is absurd, even, to debate whether Kwan deserves a spot on the U.S. Olympic team after withdrawing with a pulled groin muscle from the national championships, and announcing she will petition U.S. Figure Skating for a spot in Turin.

Kwan gave up her spot to Nancy Kerrigan back in 1994, after the famous knee-whacking from Tonya’s crew, without so much as a grump. She has been our country’s stubborn, transcendent skating star for the past decade, and so you need to bend a bit, do a lay-back spin, to get Kwan on the roster.

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“I believe I will be 100 percent,” Kwan said, in a teleconference call. “I feel I have a shot to win, that’s why I put the petition in. I know I’m my worst critic. If (officials) accept my petition, they’ll come out and examine me. If they say, ‘OK, you’re ready to go,’ and I don’t think I’m 100 percent, I will pull myself out.”

That’s all I need to hear from Kwan, who is 25 years old and still without that Olympic gold medal. She gets to go to Turin, unless she says she can’t.

Kwan is the reigning U.S. champion, and she finished fourth at World’s last year to help earn a third Olympic berth for the U.S. women.

Now, she has to beg the USFSA’s international committee for a spot, relying not so much on the rules but on the common sense of voters. There are 36 voting members on the committee, though many will recuse themselves for conflicts of interest. The way the code is written right now, Kwan’s 2005 U.S. title will not be considered at all in the decision. Only her fourth place at World’s is a factor, and that is probably not enough by itself.

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Doesn’t matter. Kwan goes, Cohen goes. After that, one 16-year-old goes as the third U.S. competitor. Another 16-year-old, who might have finished 13th in Turin,  gets bumped, like Kwan in 1994. No big deal. The Japanese just did this for Miki Ando, naming the top skater to their team after a disappointing national championship performance.

“In ’94, I was very young,” Kwan said. “I skated really well at nationals. The whole instance of the knee-whacking and Nancy and Tonya, I just wasn’t aware of it, but I knew Nancy deserved to go. So I was bumped off the team, but I was able to compete at the world championships.”

Kwan is far from at her peak, at the moment. In Boston recently at a pseudo-competition, she failed to land a single clean triple. Even if she regains her strength, fights through the hip and groin injuries that have plagued her this season, Kwan probably won’t win a medal in Turin. She doesn’t have the arsenal of jumps owned now by some of the Japanese and Russian skaters.

So this is a largely ceremonial decision, and yet it is an important one. A USFSA official said yesterday the committee has “some leeway” in approving Kwan’s petition, that it needn’t go strictly by the book. And David Raith, the executive director, called Kwan, “a tremendous champion, who never missed a national championship, a great ambassador for the sport.”

They will do the right thing, hopefully, ignore the figure skating purists and nerds who will complain greatly about fiddling with the rulebook.

Kwan will begin training again on Jan. 13 in California, with her coach, Rafael Arutunian. A U.S. official will watch her, report back. Then after the American women skate their long program at nationals the next evening, the USFSA’s international committee will meet, vote and announce the final roster late at night.

If Kwan isn’t on that team, NBC will have a coronary and Olympic viewers will be without their touchstone. I don’t care so much about the network, but Kwan gets to say when it’s time to quit.