Kim isn't perfect, but she still wins

Mistake-filled finale doesn't keep S. Korean from crown

LAKE PLACID, N.Y. -- South Korean megastar Kim Yu-Na revealed her humanity in Sunday's concluding long program at Skate America. It was her worst performance in at least two years. She fell attempting one jump and botched two others. She admitted feeling pressure to live up to the standard of perfection she recently had set for herself.

On the other hand, the weakness the prohibitive Olympic gold medal favorite showed three months before the Winter Games in Vancouver, B.C., didn't matter all that much. Despite the flubs, the nerves, the uncustomary fall and the bad day all around, she still easily won the high-profile International Skating Union Grand Prix event.

In front of a sign-holding, flag-waving, name-chanting crowd that included many fans of Korean descent at the 1980 Olympic Rink, Kim, 19, performed what was for her a disaster of a program and still captured her second consecutive Skate America title -- and by a convincing margin.

She finished second to American Rachael Flatt in Sunday's deciding long program, but won the event with a score of 187.98 points. Though it was well below the world-record total of 210.03 she posted last month at another ISU Grand Prix event in Paris, it easily put her ahead of Flatt (174.91) and Hungary's Julia Sebestyen (159.03). American Emily Hughes landed in seventh place (135.31), and absent from this event was reigning Olympic silver medal winner Sasha Cohen, who dropped out with a calf injury last week.

"Previously, I used to not think about the pressure too much," Kim said through an interpreter. "But this season . . . is an Olympic season, so I feel pressure because many people are anticipating and expecting high scores."

Though this event revealed the degree to which Kim towers over the world of women's figure skating -- she set a world record in Saturday's short program -- it also raised a question without a clear answer: Was this merely a to-be-expected bad day? Or has the pressure of carrying an entire nation's hopes and dreams gone from being a heavy burden for Kim to one that could become increasingly unmanageable as the Games approach?

"I'm sure it's incredibly hard to live up to that expectation," Flatt, 17, said. "It's pretty incredible what she can put out every time in competition, so I admire her for that."

Kim set a world record in points at last year's world championships in Los Angeles, where she claimed her first world title. She then broke that record at her first Grand Prix this season in Paris. She set another world best in Saturday's short program, with a score that would have placed her second in the men's event.

All of that perfection, she said, was becoming a bit much to handle.

"I guess I was nervous too much before the competition," Kim said, "because I was the last skater, and yesterday I did a perfect short. So I felt a lot of pressure in my long program."

Kim received downgraded marks on her triple Lutz-triple toe combination jump. She fell attempting a triple flip. She doubled a planned triple Lutz. Her technical score of 51.18 fell well below the 60.35 earned by Flatt, who hit all of her seven triple jumps, including a triple flip-triple toe combination. Flatt's only error came on her final combination spin, which in fact was not a combination at all and received no points.

After the mostly clean program, Flatt, the two-time U.S. silver medal winner, threw her fists into the air. She trailed by more than 17 points after the short program, so winning did not seem realistic, but at least she showed she could stand tall and compete at a big event. She will be one of more than a half-dozen U.S. women, including Alexandria's Ashley Wagner, competing for two Olympic-team slots at the U.S. championships in Spokane, Wash., in January.