Months ago, figure skater Michelle Kwan and former Olympic champion Christopher Dean huddled at a practice session, listening to a piece of music -- Ravel's Bolero -- that Dean and Jayne Torvill had used in a legendary performance. As they planned choreography for this winter's competitive season, they sought the perfect mix of passion, emotion, drama, power and richness.
And mathematics.
Michelle Kwan has faced some criticism for skipping the last two Grand Prix seasons, which would have given her a chance to test a new scoring system.
(Paul Chiasson -- AP)
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For the first time in her career, Kwan recalled, she clutched a piece of paper while on the ice, studying point values attached to various spins, jumps and footwork. Kwan, one of the most popular and accomplished skaters in the sport's history, wasn't sure if she needed creativity to make the challenging piece come to life, or a calculator.
Because of her decision to sit out the past two International Skating Union Grand Prix seasons, Kwan has yet to face the sport's new computer-oriented judging system in which a panel of judges grades each element of a skater's program as it unfolds. The system made its debut more than a year ago in the aftermath of a judging scandal at the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics in which a French judge and her federation president were banned from the sport for attempting to rig the outcomes of the pairs and ice dance competitions.
It is aimed at bringing more objectivity to a sport once considered rife with corruption and cheating. There have been questions, however, over whether its focus on scoring a program's technical aspects could constrain skaters like Kwan, a five-time world champion whose artistry has been known to bring judges to tears.
Kwan said final preparations for the Jan. 11-16 U.S. figure skating championships in Portland, Ore., her only tuneup before the world championships, have been anything but relaxed. The U.S. championships will be contested under the old scoring system, a far more subjective one in which judges rank skaters only in two broad categories on a 6.0 scale. How she will fare under the new judging system remains the biggest mystery of the skating season.
"It is a little nerve-racking," Kwan, 24, said in a telephone interview after a recent skating practice at Lake Arrowhead, Calif. "Getting ready to compete with new footwork, new spins, it seems like there is a lot on my plate. I've got to do this and I've got to do that. . . . I've always had great success under the 6.0 system. I'm very curious about how I will be judged under the new system. . . . I also see it as a challenge: Either you step up to it, or you don't."
Kwan's absence from the Grand Prix circuit has been analyzed by many and criticized by some, given the opportunity those events afforded to test the new system -- an opportunity every other elite skater has seized. Kwan, who said she bypassed the circuit to allow her preparations to move at her own pace, has done just five major competitions since the fall of 2002 -- two U.S. championships, two world championships and Skate America in 2002, entering as a last-minute replacement.
Russian judge Alexander Lakernik said skipping the Grand Prix was "not the best way" for Kwan to ready herself for the 2005 world championships. Another international judge, who requested anonymity, speculated that Kwan was apprehensive leaving the comforts of a system that has rewarded her with a record 50 6.0 scores over the years.
"I think it scares Kwan," the judge said. "She knows she's not going to see 6.0s anymore."
Indeed, Kwan will see just cumulative point totals, lump sums of judges' element-by-element evaluations of her program, rather than strings of 5.9s or 6.0s from the entire judging panel.
Kwan admitted the menu of changes and challenges this season is daunting, but no more, she said, than in the past. She rebounded from a disappointing 1998 Winter Games in Nagano, Japan, in which she finished second to Tara Lipinski. In the fall of 2002, she had to decide whether to continue in skating after earning a crushing bronze medal at the Salt Lake Olympics.
That winter, she wasn't sure she would even compete at the U.S. championships until weeks before the event.
"It is never boring," she said. "It's never for a moment smooth sailing. You're back to square one all of the time. . . . It's never ending."
