Mike Celizic

On the biggest stage in the biggest moment of his life, Johnny Weir wasn’t even as competitive as Bode Miller.

America’s hope for just its third medal in men’s figure skating in the last five Olympic Games skated into a sea of waving flags and lusty cheers, a small and wiry figure dressed in black tights wrapped in a blue lace doily. As he waited for his music, Otonal, to cue, he stood just one good free skate away from a silver medal, which the U.S. men hadn’t seen since Paul Wylie won one of that color in 1992 in Albertville.

And when it was over, the crowd whooped and cheered as if he’d won. But those who knew what they were looking at shook their heads sadly for Weir. They didn’t need to wait for the scores to know that the flamboyant and engaging skater had picked the absolute worst time to cough up a gigantic hairball on the Palavela arena ice.

He is said to have a quadruple jump in his arsenal, but on a chilly Thursday night in Turin, it was no more in evidence than Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction. On the night when champions reach down for something extra, Weir couldn’t find even the most routine elements of medal-winning routines.

Weir had an excuse: “I missed the bus. They changed the schedule. It was every 10 minutes. Today it was every half-hour. I was late getting here and never caught up. I never felt comfortable in this building. I didn’t feel my inner peace, I didn’t feel my aura. Inside I was black.”

Cue the Rolling Stones.

Evgeni Plushenko, on the other hand, had his mojo working when he needed it. The Russian favorite for gold came in with the lead and skated first in the last group. If his rivals were waiting for him to falter, they were badly disappointed.

Plushenko did was champions do. His very first jump, a quadruple-triple-double combination, crushed any hopes that anyone could beat him. He threw 10 jumps, including another combination, in the first two minutes of his 4 1/2-minute program, then put on a dazzling display of footwork and coasted home, tossing in two more jumps late in the program for a total of 12.

Slide show   Emotional Moments Feb. 26: See photos of athletes' highs and lows from Sunday.

Weir didn’t even get in 10, only one of which was a combination. At one point, he looked ready to do a triple-double combination, then thought better of it and did nothing. When it was over, he fled.

And so another of the many story lines we so confidently wove before the games began unraveled like a two-dollar sweater in a briar patch.

Maybe there’s a lesson here for those of us in the business of creating heroes before they’ve done anything to merit that lofty status. Part of the business is forecasting who should win and who shouldn’t, and once an athlete is installed as a medal favorite, he or she makes the rounds of the magazine covers, the Olympic preview sections of the newspapers and all the big network shows.