For the four minutes it took to post the scores of the skater before her, she glided around the ice, calm yet purposeful, a serious expression on her face but relaxed enough to soak in the atmosphere Tuesday night at the Salt Lake Ice Center.
Michelle Kwan looked around as she did this final warmup. She saw a few people giving standing ovations.
“Wait,” she thought. “I didn’t skate yet.”
Then she slowed to assume the pose that signaled the start of the music to which Kwan would skate for the next 2 minutes 40 seconds.
Just as the first notes of a Rachmaninoff piano trio were about to sound, her lips parted into a little smile, as if Kwan were breaking the spell of grim determination with which she had made an unsuccessful attempt to win an Olympic gold medal four years ago.
“You’ve got to feel fortunate even before you skate the program,” she said. “I have no regrets. I wanted to come here and enjoy myself. I’ve done this a million times in practice.”
Kwan did it well enough this time to win her second straight Olympic short program, this one by a 5-4 edge over Russia’s Irina Slutskaya. Right behind them was the star of the evening, Olympic debutante Sasha Cohen of the United States, who beat Slutskaya on three of the judges’ cards.
“You feel here a `war on ice,”‘ Slutskaya said.
Sarah Hughes of the United States was fourth. The oldest skater in the competition, 29-year-old Maria Butyrskaya of Russia, was fifth.
Any of the top three can win the gold medal by finishing first in Thursday’s free skate. It was in that four-minute phase of the competition that Kwan lost the 1998 Olympic gold to teammate Tara Lipinski.
“It’s like a race,” said Kwan, 21, of Lake Arrowhead, Calif. “All the money is in the other corner and you’ve just got to run to get it.
“Whoever is fastest wins. Too bad we’re not on a stopwatch. We just have to present well.”
Although the short program is supposed to be a technical exercise, with skaters required to do spins, jumps and footwork sequences, the presentation marks put four-time world champion Kwan in first place. It was a revival meeting: Kwan had brought back her 4-year-old short program, and it brought back a complete string of 5.9s.
That bodes well for the free skate, where presentation is the tie-breaking score.
None of the leading skaters made a significant mistake. Kwan lacked speed at times, but she was in total command of all her elements to beat Slutskaya in a short program for the first time since the Russian began to challenge her supremacy in the 2000 season.
Slutskaya was Air Irina, hanging forever above the ice on her powerful jumps and spinning at great speed.
Cohen captivated the judges with her intricate body positions and expressive arm movements, adding to solid technical mastery.
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“Cohen’s flow, her deep edging [with the blade edges], her confidence were terrific,” said Swedish coach Lotta Falkenbeck, who finished 21st in the 1988 Winter Olympics.
“Her spins were good and, of course, her spirals were really good. I thought she was brilliant.”
Cohen, 17, of Laguna Niguel, Calif., was thought to be at a disadvantage because she never had competed in a senior-level world championship. Once again, however, there was no biding time for this teenager with an ability to move to music superior unmatched in the skating world.
“When I got on the ice, it felt totally different than I thought,” Cohen said. “I was nervous before but once I got on, I was not nervous at all, absolutely calm.
“I couldn’t believe it was finally here, the moment I had waited for all my life.”
The German, Italian and U.S. judges liked her better than Slutskaya, and Cohen beat Kwan on one judge’s technical mark, with ties on four others.
“The marks were higher than I expected,” Cohen said. “I’m happy I got the marks I deserve. I just want to keep it together on Thursday.”
Cohen has yet to do a “clean,” or error-free, program in an international free skate.
Hughes, 16, of Kings Point, N.Y., thought she was underscored, although the judges might have penalized her for a footwork sequence that was short and her consistent tendency to take off on the wrong edge for her triple-lutz jump. Three judges had her in fourth-place, but the Russian judge ranked her 10th with a 5.1 for the technical mark and a 5.5 for presentation.
“Being third in the world [last year] and skating a clean short program. … I’m not a judge,” Hughes said.
And if she were?
“I’d give myself 5.8, 5.9,” she said.