updated 12:52 a.m. ET Jan. 14, 2006

ST. LOUIS - Tanith Belbin capped her grand night with a patriotic touch.

Two weeks after being sworn in as a U.S. citizen, the ice dancer carried an American flag around the ice during the medals ceremony Friday night at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships. It was her third national title, but this was unlike the others.

Completely.

“This title actually feels different for a number of reasons,” said Belbin, who with longtime partner Ben Agosto, easily skated to the championship. “Obviously the biggest of which is we can finally compete as two American citizens.

“Last year, at the world championships, we still really didn’t think we had much of a chance of making it with the citizenship issue. Yeah, in a way we had to kind of allow ourselves to feel maybe this was it for us, maybe the Olympics were out of the question.”

Now, the games are on Belbin and Agosto’s schedule, and coming off a silver medal at worlds, they will be medals favorites in Turin.

With an intricate flamenco dance that emphasized technique rather than passion, Belbin and Agosto won the only automatic berth available for next month’s games — a spot that was anything but automatic for the Canadian-born Belbin.

Until Congress sped up the naturalization process, Belbin and Agosto were going to sit home in February while lesser couples represented the United States in Italy. Much lesser couples, because Belbin and Agosto are the best American ice dancers in three decades.

And, of course, you can emphasize American: She was sworn in as a U.S. citizen on Dec. 31 after the law was changed.

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While their flamenco didn’t exactly melt the ice, it contained a variety of difficult maneuvers, including twizzles (quick turns while traveling across the ice on one foot), rotational lifts and precise footwork. They were in character from the outset, from Agosto’s confident swagger to her teasing charm.

Belbin, 21, pumped her fist after seeing the total mark of 215.29 that gave them a sweep of the free dance, original dance and compulsories in a runaway over Melissa Gregory and Denis Petukhov. In third were Jamie Silverstein and Ryan O’Meara.

Those two couples got the other Olympic slots, chosen later Friday night by a U.S. Figure Skating international committee.

No U.S. dance team has medaled in the Olympics since 1976. Few have even been competitive with the Russians, French and, of course, the legendary Torvill and Dean.

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But Belbin and Agosto could end that slump.

“We’ve just taken a huge step in ice dancing,” she said. “I’d like to applaud all of our competitors because I think it’s phenomenal how far we’ve come.”

Pethukov, a Russian married to Gregory, became a U.S. citizen last February. His mother, Luba, has been in the country the last six weeks, her first trip here. Now, her son and daughter-in-law have a trip to Turin on their schedule.

“When I was standing on the podium, actually, I found her in the crowd and I don’t think I have seen her happier before,” Petukhov said. “Her smile was very big, and it made me really satisfied. It makes me remember the whole way that I’ve gone through, many years of hard training.”

Silverstein, 22, won the world juniors with another partner in 1999, then stopped skating in 2000 because of an eating disorder. She went to Cornell and only returned to the sport a little more than a year ago.

“If someone wants to look up to me as a role model, I guess that’s OK,” she said. “I just try to be really honest. Everyone’s got stuff. We all pretend everything’s perfect and no one is. But that’s really cool. There’s some beauty in the flaws.”

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She and O’Meara moved up from fourth in compulsories to third in original to second in free dance. Their only international meet was last October’s Skate America, where they were fifth.

And now they are Olympians.

Although Petukhov slipped twice and Gregory tripped once, they had more than enough grace and intricacy to make the podium. Most impressive was a spread-eagle by Petukhov on which she did a handstand on his leg.

Their score of 185.26 wasn’t even close to the number Belbin and Agosto posted, though.

“I think we’re looking at these Olympics as just the icing on the cake,” Belbin said. “We really just want to enjoy the experience, and we’ll certainly not try to keep ourselves in a bubble going to Torino. We want to live it up and take in everything that the Olympics has to offer.”

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