It figures for Kim, Lysacek to take golden parachute

Ten things I know, and you should:

1. I hope I'm wrong, but my gut feeling is 2010 Olympic figure skating singles champions Kim Yuna of South Korea and Evan Lysacek of the United States are done with competitive skating.

2.  Both Kim, 20, and Lysacek, 25, always will be remembered for having given a career-defining performance to win the gold medal.  Not a bad way to go out, if that's what either decides.

3. Helene Elliott's column about Michelle Kwan in Wednesday's Times reinforced my conviction that while Kwan never won an Olympic gold medal, she rapidly is becoming one of the greatest Olympians ever -- a person of so many more dimensions than she showed us in her extraordinary skating career.

4. The U.S. Olympic Committee should step in if USA Track & Field's board decides to dump CEO Doug Logan after this weekend's meeting in Las Vegas. Logan deserves to get through at least the 2012 Olympics.  Blaming him for a poor showing in Beijing two years ago is ridiculous.  The guy was on the job about 12 minutes before the 2008 Summer Games.

5. Ice Wars: Kim Yuna (Pyeongchang) vs. Katarina Witt (Munich). The two Olympic champions are big names on their country's bid team rosters in the effort to bring home the 2018 Winter Games.  The winner of the International Olympic Committee's vote next year?  Kim and South Korea.

Skater Johnny Weir says he plans to reinvent himself

Johnny Weir's off-ice charisma has overshadowed his competitive skating for several seasons. Now, the three-time U.S. champion has decided to step back and assess himself, for what may be a comeback in a different guise.

U.S. Figure Skating announced Thursday morning that Weir will take next season off from competition in an attempt, as Weir put it, "to reinvent myself as an athlete and artist.  I say this with the hope of returning as a competitor for the 2011-12 season.''

Read more: "Skater Weir taking competitive break to reinvent himself"

-- Philip Hersh in Chicago

Photos:  Johnny Weir gets into the Kentucky Derby spirit with an outlandish hat. Credit: David Perry / McClatchey-Tribune

Skaters Keauna McLaughlin and Rockne Brubaker, once the future, are now history

Barely two years after being hailed as the next great U.S. pairs skating team, Keauna McLaughlin of Tarzana and Rockne Brubaker of Algonquin, Ill., are done skating together.

McLaughlin, 17, has decided to leave the sport for at least a year and concentrate on high school. Brubaker, who turned 24 on Monday, will search for another partner.

After winning the 2008 and 2009 U.S. titles, they dropped to fifth last season, failing to win a 2010 Olympics spot.  At the time, Brubaker vowed they would press on.

"Sometimes things don't always work out the way you would like them to," Brubaker said in January. "It's about staying the course.  We're young."

Pairs is a discipline that often demands years for the chemistry of excellence to catalyze. The 2010 Olympic champions, Shen Xue and Zhao Hongbo of China, skated together 18 years; silver medalists Pang Qing and Tong Jian of China for 17 years; and bronze medalists Aliona Savchenko and Robin Szolkowy of Germany for seven.

McLaughlin and Brubaker stayed together just four seasons. They had immediate success on the junior level, winning the U.S. and world junior titles in 2007, then took the national senior title in 2008 with a performance so compelling NBC commentator Sandra Bezic said it gave her shivers when she thought of how promising their future looked.

Despite winning a second straight U.S. title in 2009, McLaughlin and Brubaker consistently struggled over the last two seasons, finishing 11th at the 2009 worlds.

They switched coaches after that, moving to John A.W. Nicks in California, but that did not stop their slide from a team that won everything in their first season together to one that had become distant also-rans in 2010.

-- Philip Hersh

Photo: Keauna McLaughlin and Rockne Brubaker after finishing fifth at the 2010 U.S. Championships. Credit: Rick Bowmer / Associated Press

Words of wisdom from Michelle Kwan -- that's Dr. Michelle Kwan

 

Early this year, at the end of a phone conversation with Michelle Kwan about eventual 2010 Olympic champion Kim Yuna of South Korea, we began talking about Kwan's studies, and I told Michelle that what she has done since her skating career ended impresses me even more than the two Olympic medals, five world titles, nine U.S. titles and widespread admiration she earned on the ice.

Kwan could have spent the rest of her life as "America's Guest,'' raking in big bucks as a motivational speaker and corporate schmoozer and appearing in ice shows.

Instead, she has gone on to become a U.S. public diplomacy envoy, a graduate of Denver University and a master's degree student at the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy at Tufts University. She has allowed a curiosity about the world -- that was piqued but unsatisfied by all her foreign travel for skating -- to become a beacon for her intellectual pursuits.

That obviously impressed Southern Vermont College as well. The school chose Kwan to be its 2010 commencement speaker and made her an honorary doctor of humane letters Saturday.

As she said in her speech, "Sooner or later -- and probably sooner -- you have to adapt, change course, and give new things a try. ... My attitude is: Prepare for the new, however unexpected … and don’t linger in the old, however comfortable. Sometimes we just have to move on, content with what we had, and preparing for whatever may come.''

The college graciously forwarded the entire text of Dr. Kwan's remarks. You can read it on the jump.

-- Philip Hersh

Photo: Michelle Kwan delivers the commencement speech Saturday at Southern Vermont College, which made her an honorary doctor of humane letters. Credit: Southern Vermont College

Mirai Nagasu not on par with Rachel Flatt? Huh?

I am trying to figure out how U.S. Figure Skating decided Mirai Nagasu does not belong on the same level as Rachael Flatt in the "team envelopes" for the 2010-11 season that USFS announced Friday.

That means Nagasu will get lower funding than Flatt.

According to U.S. Figure Skating, the criteria for tier placement are "primarily determined by the athlete's performance in international and U.S. Figure Skating competitions during the previous season.''

Flatt, 17, the U.S. champion, is Tier One.  Nagasu, who finished second at nationals, went on to beat Flatt at both the Olympics (fourth to Flatt's seventh) and worlds (seventh to ninth), but she is Tier Two.

Flatt did better on the Grand Prix circuit, even if she failed to make the final, but those results are inconsequential, anyway, compared to Olympics or worlds.

But U.S. Figure Skating has this illogical standard for determining Tier One:

A U.S. championship combined with a top-10 finish at Olympics puts a skater in Tier One.  (So do medals at Olympics or worlds or a top-three standing in the world rankings at the end of the season, but neither Flatt nor Nagasu meets any of those criteria.)

So Flatt, whose season went downhill after nationals, somehow is ranked higher than Nagasu.

Flatt, an exceptional student, has chosen Stanford from a laundry list of acceptances at elite universities but will defer matriculation for a year to see what would happen to her skating career by devoting full time to the sport.

Should Flatt decide to continue competing once she gets to Stanford, she will almost certainly have to find a new coach, since her current coach, Tom Zakrajsek, is based in Colorado Springs.  Even in this age of infinite forms of communication, coaching a skater by e-mail, Twitter, video and the like does not seem workable.

Here's some unsolicited advice for Flatt:

If your international results aren't better next season than they were in 2010, think long and hard about what you might gain and what you may lose by continuing.  You might gain the opportunity to skate in another Olympics.  You may lose the opportunity to experience the full richness of life at Stanford because you will have to train off campus (fighting area traffic) and travel far to compete.  While Stanford intercollegiate athletes also travel, they have a university support system to make all that easier.

Flatt has spoken with Dr. Debi Thomas, now an orthopedic surgeon, who combined skating and Stanford.  Thomas took a leave from Stanford after two years to train for the 1988 Olympics, where Thomas won the bronze medal.  She is one of the few skaters in the past 25 years to have significant success in both school and the sport, but Thomas had stopped competing before her final three years at Stanford, and it took six years to get her degree in general engineering.

Two-time Olympic medalist Michelle Kwan tried UCLA and skating during the 2001 season, then left school to prepare for the 2002 Olympics.  She became a full-time student at Denver University after her final Olympic effort in 2006 ended in an injury withdrawal two days after the Opening Ceremony.  Kwan, like Thomas, has gone on to serious academic pursuits as a master's student at the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy at Tufts.

Paul Wylie, the 1992 Olympic silver medalist, fulfilled his potential as a skater only after he graduated from Harvard after five years of college in 1991.  At the 1991 worlds, Wylie had finished 11th after barely qualifying for the free skate.

This is what Wylie told me several years ago about the difficulties of being at an elite university and trying to be an elite skater:

Skater Mirai Nagasu says she will move with her coach

Got a couple of responses Thursday from a very busy Mirai Nagasu, answering a question I had texted her recently about the effect of her coach Frank Carroll's planned move this summer from the Toyota Sports Center near Los Angeles International Airport to a new rink 130 miles east in Cathedral City.

(For my blog post on the situation, published Tuesday, click here.)

Nagasu, who lives 45 miles from El Segundo and about 100 miles from Cathedral City, will be along for the ride.

"Yes, I'm going with him," she said in the first message, then added, "If you could raise money so I can move there that'd be great ... lol.''

Nagasu, 16, was texting from Fort Myers, Fla., where she will be performing in the Smucker's Stars on Ice show that opens a 41-city tour Thursday night. Stars on Ice plays the Staples Center on May 20 and the Honda Center in Anaheim on May 21.

"I'm skating a show today in brand new skates ... literally!!!'' Nagasu texted.

She had returned home Monday from the World Championships in Turin, Italy, then flew east Wednesday with her "chaperon,'' Olympic champion Evan Lysacek. 

Lysacek is juggling 26 appearances with Stars on Ice with his work on "Dancing With The Stars," which requires he be in Los Angeles from Sunday through Tuesday for as many as nine more weeks (if he makes the "DWTS" final).  He and partner Anna Trebunskaya survived the first cut Tuesday.

-- Philip Hersh

Photo: Mirai Nagasu in the free skate last Saturday at the World Figure Skating Championships. Credit: Clive Rose / Getty Images

Skate coach Carroll expects his move won't affect Nagasu

Bumped into Frank Carroll at Monday night's "Dancing With the Stars" show, where he was a front-row guest of his Olympic champion skater and "DWTS" contestant Evan Lysacek.

Even though Carroll was dazed by his 24-hour Sunday trip back from the world championships in Turin, Italy, we talked briefly about news of another trip he is taking, moving his primary coaching base from the Toyota Sports Center near LAX  to a new rink 130 miles east in Cathedral City, near his home in Palm Springs.

Carroll, 71, confirmed a report about the move that surfaced over the weekend on the figure skating fan site Michelle Kwan Forum.  In our brief conversation, he said the move shouldn't present any problems for his other Olympic skater, 16-year-old Mirai Nagasu.  They began working together before the 2010 season.

"From where she lives, it takes about the same time to get to Cathedral City as it does to [Toyota]," Carroll said.

Carroll will remain at Toyota through July, then coach at Lake Arrowhead until the expected October opening of the rink in Cathedral City.

As for Lysacek, who lives about two hours closer to Toyota than to Cathedral City, he has yet to decide about remaining in competitive skating at the Olympic level.

During a Tuesday conversation in the "Dancing With the Stars" lunch trailer, where he picked at fruit and salad, Lysacek said there would be ways for him to continue working with Carroll should he remain in Olympic-style skating. 

"If I go to my house in Las Vegas on the weekends, I could hit that rink on the way back [to Los Angeles, where he also will keep a residence] and train there for a couple days,'" Lysacek said.  "Frank has a huge house, so hopefully he wouldn't mind if I stayed in one of his many bedrooms.

"We haven't really talked about it.  He didn't want to distract me before the Olympics.  I just sort of heard it [the move] was happening very quickly, but I was busy with all of this, and he was getting ready for worlds.  I'm sure I will also continue to train here at Toyota Sports Center because I live here.

"My general feeling is if I am going to go for another Olympics, I can't miss a whole season.  So I would have to decide soon and be ready to compete in the fall."

Before he went into the "DWTS" ballroom, where he sat between Lysacek's mother, Tanya, and 1998 Olympic champion Tara Lipinski, Carroll shook his head over the mistake -- and the mind-set -- that had cost Nagasu a world bronze medal last week, when she won the short program but finished 11th in the free skate and seventh overall in Turin.

"She kept telling me, 'I'm scared, I'm scared, I'm scared' before going out on the ice for the free skate,'' Carroll said, "and that's obviously something we will have to work on."

Despite several major mistakes -- including a fall on a double axel -- Nagasu finished just 3.14 points behind bronze medalist Laura Lepisto.  Had Nagasu merely stayed upright on the double axel and received a neutral grade of execution, it would have been worth 3.47 more points than she received for the botched, downgraded execution of a relatively simple jump for a skater of her level.

"All season long, we have been telling her, 'Skate, skate' when she comes out of the spread eagle and goes into the double axel, but she still had the tendency to slow down, and this time it really was costly," Carroll said.

The coach still was extremely pleased with Nagasu's season, given her having finished second at the U.S. championships and fourth at the Olympics, the two events before worlds.

"Her last six programs, five of them were great," he said.  "And seventh at your first [senior] worlds isn't that bad.  Dorothy Hamill [the 1976 Olympic champion] was seventh in her first worlds.''

-- Philip Hersh

Evan Lysacek and partner Anna Trebunskaya perform the jive Monday on Week 2  of the current edition of "Dancing With the Stars."  For the second week in a row, judges gave them the second-highest scores.   Adam Larkey /ABC

No tears, but Nagasu still must get past fears

At least there was no big crying jag for Mirai Nagasu this time.

Nagasu has made substantial overall improvement since that episode at November's Cup of China, yet she still must learn to cope with what caused it: the pressure of being first after the short program at an international competition. Call it fear of flying high.

As Mao Asada of Japan won her second world title in three seasons, helped by a second straight badly flawed performance by reigning Olympic champion Kim Yuna of South Korea, short program winner Nagasu came undone in the free skate Saturday at Turin, Italy.

The 16-year-old from Arcadia, Calif., made three significant errors and plummeted to 7th overall with an 11th in the free skate. "Coming off the Olympics, where I was fourth, finishing seventh here is a really big blow," Nagasu said. "I feel really bad." Reigning U.S. champion Rachael Flatt was 9th, four places below her 2009 finish.

Nagasu's coach, Frank Carroll, had insisted she shed "no more tears'' after the China event, when she dropped to 5th after the free skate. Despite some snuffling in her voice, Nagasu kept a mostly stiff upper lip in an interview with Universal Sports after Saturday's poor performance.

Prior to Saturday, she had put together five straight strong performances -- three short programs, two free skates -- at major events: the U.S. Championships, Olympics and worlds. That was big step up from last season, when a growth spurt, a foot injury and teenage angst left her a very tearful fifth at nationals -- a year after her surprising U.S. title at age 14 -- and prompted the coaching change that brought her to Carroll. 

She always has been hard on herself, and Saturday was no exception. "I told myself last year that I wouldn't feel like this any more, so it's really a bummer to feel like this again," Nagasu said. "It took a lot to get me out of the pits last year, and I sort of feel like I'm there again now. I'm going to go home and try to get ready for next season and just take it one step at a time." 

Nagasu started badly in the free skate, with a stepout on her first triple lutz that kept her from doing a combination. Then she had a two-footed landing on her second triple lutz, which was downgraded to a double, and a fall on a double axel, which was called a single.  Her final planned triple, an easy toe loop, also was downgraded.

"Sorry," Nagasu said to Carroll after coming off the ice. An hour later, she was trying to talk a U.S. figure skating official into going for ice cream at a nearby mall. The only positive about the free skate came in the component (or artistry) scores, where Nagasu ranked a more presentable 6th. 

Kim's chances of retaining her 2009 world title disappeared when she botched two of her final three jumps. Kim's score, 130.49, was nearly 20 points below the record total (150.06) she amassed in her Olympic victory last month. It was good enough to win the free skate, but well short of overcoming the eight-point lead Asada had over Kim after the short program, when the South Korean made mistakes on three different elements.

Asada, the Olympic silver medalist, finished with 197.58 to 190.79 for Kim. Extremely generous scoring for a program filled with double jumps (eight doubles to just three triples) gave Laura Lepisto 178.62, allowing her to hang onto third by .8 over Japan's Miki Ando and become the first Finnish woman to win a world medal. Nagasu had 175.48, Flatt, 167.44.

Kim fell on a triple salchow and popped a double axel.  She also lacked spark throughout the 4-minute program. "My short program and the morning practice was not good, and I was worried," Kim said. "I am glad I was able to overcome the difficulties."

Kim's free skate score was still more than respectable. Only three other women (Asada, Joannie Rochette and Sasha Cohen) have scored higher. Kim, 19, said she would wait until after taking a break before deciding about competing next season. She was the first woman to skate at worlds in the same season she won the Olympic title since Kristi Yamaguchi of the U.S. in 1992.

Upon arriving in Turin, Kim said she had struggled with finding the motivation for worlds. "The Olympic Games were the biggest goal in my life," Kim said Saturday. "After winning the gold medal, I thought there was nothing more." 

Asada was second in 2007, first in 2008, then fourth last year, when Kim began to dominate the women's competition. "It has been a long time that I felt I had to work harder because of her (Kim)," Asada said. "Thanks to her, I grow as a skater, and I will be encouraged to work harder even from now on."

Asada, 19, gave every indication she will continue competing.  She is looking for a new coach after two seasons with Russia's Tatiana Tarasova.

-- Philip Hersh

Top photo: A dejected Mirai Nagasu, with coach Frank Carroll, after hearing her free skate scores. Credit: Clive Rose / Getty Images. Bottom photo: World champion Mao Asada of Japan congratulates silver medalist Kim Yuna of South Korea before the medal presentation Saturday. Credit: Damien Meyer / Getty Images

Kim loses world title to Asada; Nagasu falls to seventh

Kim Yuna's chances of retaining her world title disappeared when she botched two of her final three jumps in Saturday's free skate at Turin, Italy. Japan's Mao Asada took the title for the second time in three years.

And short program leader Mirai Nagasu of the U.S. came undone, dropping all the way to seventh in the final standings after a free skate with three major errors.

Nagasu was only 11th in the free skate.

Kim's free skate score, 130.49, was nearly 20 points below the record total (150.06) the South Korean amassed in her Olympic victory last month.

Asada overtook Kim in the overall score. Asada was lower in the free skate. Asada had a total score of 197.58 to 190.79 for Kim.  Laura Lepisto was third, becoming the first Finnish woman to win a medal at worlds.

Kim, 19, fell on a triple salchow and popped a double axel.  She also lacked spark throughout the 4-minute program.

As she came off the ice, her coach, Brian Orser, said, "You got through it.  Don't worry about it."

Kim's free skate score still was more than respectable.  She had only 111.70 at Skate America last fall, and only three other women (Asada, Joannie Rochette and Sasha Cohen) ever had scored higher than 130.49 going into Saturday's action.

But Kim had finished just seventh in the short program Friday with the third lowest score of her senior career, 10 points behind Nagasu and 8 behind Asada.  Kim botched a jump, a spin and a spiral in the short program.

"I'm sorry,'' Nagasu said to her coach, Frank Carroll, as she left the ice.

Nagasu started badly, with a stepout on her first triple lutz that kept her from doing a combination.  Then she had a two-footed landing on her second triple lutz and fell on a double axel.  She finished at 175.48.

U.S. champion Rachael Flatt was 9th, four places below her 2009 finish.

Kim is the first woman to compete at worlds in the same season she won the OIympic title since Kristi Yamaguchi of the U.S. in 1992.

Earlier this week, Kim said she had struggled with finding the motivation to compete at worlds.

-- Philip Hersh

Kim botches two jumps in free skate; leaders yet to take ice

Kim Yuna's chances of retaining her world title apparently disappeared when she botched two of her final three jumps in Saturday's free skate at Turin, Italy.

Her score, 130.49, was nearly 20 points below the record total (150.06) the South Korean amassed in her Olympic victory last month.

Kim, 19, fell on a triple salchow and popped a double axel. She also lacked spark throughout the four-minute program.

As she came off the ice, her coach, Brian Orser, said, "You got through it. Don't worry about it."

There were nine skaters remaining when Kim finished, including short program winner Mirai Nagasu of the United States and 2008 world champion Mao Asada of Japan.

Kim's free skate score still was more than respectable. She had only 111.70 at Skate America last fall, and only three other women (Asada, Joannie Rochette and Sasha Cohen) ever had scored higher than 130.49 going into Saturday's action. But Kim had finished just seventh in the short program Friday with the third lowest score of her senior career, 10 points behind Nagasu and 8 behind Asada. Kim botched a jump, a spin and a spiral in the short program.

-- Philip Hersh