The goal for everyone else? To try and catch her.

It wasn’t that long ago that Meissner was the up-and-comer, tailing after Michelle Kwan and Sasha Cohen. Now she’s the grand dame of U.S. skating and a former world champion, trying to hold off the pack of youngsters who want to take her spot on the podium.

“I feel more mature. Let’s not say old or anything,” the 18-year-old said, smiling.

But being the favorite hasn’t always been easy for Meissner. She finished fourth trying to defend her world title last year, and has struggled since then. She had a disastrous outing at the Grand Prix final last month, finishing dead last in the six-woman field.

“I feel like I want to come back after the Grand Prix final. I don’t even want to talk about that,” she said. “That was just a bad day.”

This was better.

She got off to a rough start, falling on her first jump, a triple flip. But she recovered with a nice triple lutz-double toe loop combination, and her double axel was so smooth she easily could have thrown in another rotation. Her footwork was nice, its lightness the perfect match to Peter Gabriel’s “The Feeling Begins.”

“That was such a silly mistake,” she said. “I was like, ‘Come on, Kimmie, that’s not right.’ There’s no falling in figure skating.”

But the fall and the fact she did a less-difficult combination than the top three means defending her title is no longer in her control.

Earlier Thursday, Tanith Belbin and Ben Agosto all but wrapped up their record-tying fifth straight dance title with a number that would be huge with the country crowd. The Olympic silver medalists won the original dance with an entertaining hoe-down number that scored 64.29 points and gave them a total score of 106.15.

And that was even with Agosto making an obvious error in his footwork near the end of the program.

“What was really frustrating was, aside from that, it was a great performance,” Agosto said. “You hate to end it on that note.”

They get a do-over in Saturday’s free dance, when they are virtually assured of winning the title and tying four other couples for most U.S. titles. Training partners Meryl Davis and Charlie White were three points behind, but it may as well have been 50 for as much movement as there is in dance.

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