Fortune has smiled on Michelle Kwan.
As she begins her quest for Olympic figure skating gold at the ladies short program competition tonight, America's top medal contender will have had the benefit of a week out of the spotlight ? courtesy of a judging scandal in the pairs event and a good draw.
Kwan for the past week has been able to practice in relative quiet as the media circus circled its wagons around pairs skaters Jamie Sale and David Pelletier of Canada, and Kwan-watch succumbed to Skategate.
Then, with literal luck of the draw, Kwan drew the 15th position out of 27 in the short program. The news is good for Kwan, because judges typically leave room in the marks for the later skaters. It is not so good for her American teammates, Sarah Hughes and Sasha Cohen, who drew the fifth and sixth spots, respectively.
Kwan's most formidable rival, Irina Slutskaya of Russia, will skate 13th, immediately following another Russian medal contender, 1999 world champion Maria Butyrskaya.
Slutskaya, the three-time world silver medalist, had her first practice session at the Delta Center (Salt Lake Ice Center) on Sunday after training for the past few weeks in Logan. Without giving any specifics, she hinted she has added new fireworks to her Olympic programs.
"I'm practicing a lot of things," she said. "We'll see how it goes. I really will try something special."
Slutskaya is known for pushing the level of difficulty in ladies figure skating. She was the first woman to perform a triple Salchow-triple loop combination at the 1997 World Championships and landed the first triple Lutz-triple loop combination in competition at the 2001 Grand Prix Final. She was also the first woman to perform a double Biellmann spin from each foot.
Kwan has spent the past few weeks training at the Delta Center and the Steiner practice rink and enjoying her Olympic experience. Regardless of whether her time on the ice is golden, Kwan said, the years since her disappointing loss to fellow American Tara Lipinski at the 1998 Nagano Games have taught her some valuable lessons.
"For me, I can't justify training for four years just for that six minutes on the ice," she said. "There's got to be more things I enjoy out of skating, and for me, it is definitely the process of getting there. . . . It's everything, it's every day you skate, regardless of falling and making mistakes, being frustrated, feeling like crazed at times."
And, if things don't go her way this week, Kwan said, she'll be fine.
"There's more to life than just a medal," she said. "You live life with no regrets. Some things might be great, some things might not be so great. Will it (a medal) complete me as a person?
"I wish I could say that winning so many medals would complete me as a person; I'd be the happiest person on Earth. But yet, how come the richest, most famous people aren't the happiest?" Kwan said.
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