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Memo to Michelle Kwan: Try for the Olympics? Go for it!

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This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

CLEVELAND -- When I finished writing about the women’s free skate at the U.S. Championships Saturday night, I immediately began to think about Michelle Kwan.

Kwan recently said there is a possibility she may skate again in public for the first time since an August, 2006 show –- and that she has not ruled out anything about her future in the sport, including a shot at the 2010 Olympics.

Since there seems little exciting about the present state of women’s skating in the

United States, I figured it was time to find out what she meant. When I got her on the phone today, she was packing boxes in her Denver apartment, preparing to move back to L.A. with her two-month-old University of Denver diploma in hand. She had spent Sunday snowboarding at Vail in snow up to her waist.

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‘I have been working with a trainer for two months,’ Kwan told me. ‘I’m starting to do triples [triple jumps] to see how far I can push myself.

‘I want to get in good shape and see how far that takes me, because I don’t know. But I have made no decisions whatsoever.’

I hope she decides to go for the 2010 U.S. Olympic team.

I don’t care if she falls short or if she makes the team and finishes 20th in the Olympics.

I don’t care if she refuses to submit to the ludicrous technical demands of the new judging system and simply decides to be the old Michelle Kwan, who won five world titles and two Olympic medals.

After all, the old Michelle Kwan might have been good enough to win the 2009 U.S. title, given Alissa Czisny did it with high scores for her overall skating quality but only three clean triple jumps in the free skate. Kwan, always known for high overall quality, never landed fewer than five triples in her nine title-winning free skates.

Yes, I know the nitpickers in the new system might have downgraded some of Kwan’s past jumps to doubles.

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Yes, I know Kwan will be 29 in July. Russia’s Maria Butyrskaya was 29 when she finished sixth at the 2002 Olympics (old system). Countrywoman Irina Slutskaya was 27 when she won bronze at the 2006 Olympics (new system). And age parameters for athletes in all sports are being changed by sophisticated training and sports medicine.

Yes, I know Kwan made the 2006 Olympic team on an injury waiver, later withdrew from the Games when the injury would not heal and has not been involved in a serious competition since finishing fourth at the 2005 world championships. I also know Kwan’s new system score at 2005 worlds, 175.20, has been topped in international competition by only one woman who competed at the 2009 nationals, Caroline Zhang -- by barely one point (also in the days before the computerized carping.)

And two-time gold medalist Katarina Witt had been out of Olympic-style skating for five years when she returned, at age 28, to finish a respectable seventh in the 1994 Winter Games -- a comeback certainly easier under the old system but not impossible now.

Kwan told me Monday she no longer feels pain in a hip operated on soon after that final Champions on Ice appearance in 2006.

‘It makes me feel so good to get off the ice and not feel sore,’ she said. ‘I’m an athlete, and I’ll always be an athlete. I’m going to keep working out, on and off the ice, and we’ll see what happens.’

She may decide graduate school in international relations would be a better use of her time than training for another Olympic appearance. She may find herself unable to regain the skills for competition and decide to do only an ice show. She may decide that skating for the public is part of her past.

But Kwan should know this: Nothing that happens in a comeback attempt will diminish her previous achievements. Even without an Olympic title, she is the greatest skater of the past 20 years and among the top five women in the history of the sport.

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Just to watch her doing a spiral -– a pure, clean spiral, not the ungainly contortions skaters must perform in the new system -– would be enough.

And there would be one clear winner if Kwan felt capable of a comeback.

Figure skating.

-- Philip Hersh

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