COMMENTARY

By Nancy Armour

updated 3:52 p.m. ET Jan. 29, 2006

LOS ANGELES - When it comes to figure skating, somebody’s always got their sequins in a snit about something.

There’s the ever-popular debate about whether it’s a sport or not, all those judging shenanigans and, of course, those horrific costumes. But sending Michelle Kwan to the Turin Olympics shouldn’t even be a question. She deserves that spot, and she’s earned it.

And with the way she looked in front of that monitoring committee Friday, don’t bet against her making a run at another medal.

Kwan may not have had her usual competitive sparkle — it’s a little hard in an empty rink, wearing practice tights and a ponytail — and she’s going to have to add a few more tricks to be a contender. But her all-business attitude showed just how badly she wants this.

The plan was to have breaks between her run-throughs, giving the monitors a chance to compare their notes and Kwan time to regroup. Skaters don’t often do back-to-back run-throughs. Talk to one five minutes after they’ve done a program, and they’re still gasping for breath and wiping away the sweat that’s dripping from their foreheads.

But four minutes after she finished her long program, there was Kwan, back at center ice in her starting pose.

“I said, ‘What are you doing Michelle?”’ said Bob Horen, head of the monitoring committee. “She was ready to do her short program.”

Kwan initially hadn’t planned to do any double axels for the monitors. That was the jump on which she injured her groin, and she only started doing it again Thursday. But she went ahead and tried one in the short program anyway.

And promptly fell.

Now, that one error wasn’t going to make the monitoring committee say, “Oh, we can’t send her to Turin.” But as soon as she finished her short program, Kwan tried the double axel again and did it perfectly. Then she did another one perfectly.

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“I know that I have a lot to work on, a lot of improvement to make,” she said. “I know to take advantage of the seconds and the minutes before the Olympics.”

But she’s in good shape — certainly good enough to be considered one of the three best skaters in the United States.

Though she never tried the triple loop and did only four triples in her free skate, all of them were solid. She still has that smooth, lyrical style that makes everyone else look clunky.

She also has another three weeks to improve.

“One of the reasons why I put in the petition is that I do have a shot,” she said. “I can’t tell you the percentage of winning gold. But I will take advantage of that shot and do my best. As of now I’m right on schedule.”

By now, most people know that Kwan needed a medical bye onto the Olympic team after that groin injury kept her out of the national championships. You can argue all you want whether those should even be allowed, but the fact is, they are, and Kwan had every right to take advantage of it.

“I felt that what was in the criteria for the petition, that I had met it,” she said. “I didn’t make the decision, it was up to the committee. With the criticism, I can’t do anything about it.”

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And that notion that she should have gracefully stepped aside for Emily Hughes, the bronze medalist at nationals, is just silly.

At 25, the five-time world and nine-time U.S. champion is no longer heads and skates above the competition the way she once was. She has competed sparingly over the past few years, and her fourth-place finish at the world championships last March was her worst in a decade. We’re still waiting to see that triple-triple combination she’s always talking about.

But she’s not Willie Mays bumbling around the outfield, either.

Her poor showing at worlds? It still was less than half a point from the bronze medal. She also was using programs designed for the old 6.0 judging scale, not the new points-based system that has very specific difficulty levels.

“It was hard to adapt under the new system,” she said. “But this year I made sure the spins, the footwork and all the spirals were up to the new system. So I’m not too worried.”

When she’s on, Kwan’s performances can move people to tears. Though she was clearly more concerned with getting through the session than performing Friday, there were glimpses of that old brilliance.

Her free skate music, Rachmaninoff’s “Prelude in C Sharp Minor,” is the soaring, majestic type that suits her best. Her footwork is quick, intricate and expressive, the kind of dancing on ice that can bring a house down. And the spin she did at the end of the session would stack up against anyone in the world.

“It’s truly the opinion of this monitoring team that Michelle could win the Olympics,” Horen said. “We really believe that, and she skated that way.”

She certainly deserves the right to try.

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