This qualifies as a failure

MOSCOW -- It had nothing to do with the new scoring format. They could have been using the binary system inside Luzhniki Sports Palace yesterday afternoon and Michelle Kwan still would have been hung with some rough numbers. When you make three major errors in a figure skating program, there's no way to make the math work for you.

"Not very good," the five-time ice queen conceded, after she finished an unsettling seventh in the qualifying round of the world championships in her debut under the complex "code of points" system. "Not very good at all."

Not that Kwan expected a walkover after skipping the entire Grand Prix season again and competing only once, in the United States nationals in mid-January. But nobody figured she would come out stiff-legged and sluggish, blowing two of her three combinations and ending up behind a half-dozen women whom she's been beating forever -- former Russian world champion Irina Slutskaya, teammate Sasha Cohen, current world titlist Shizuka Arakawa and her Japanese countrywomen, Miki Ando and Fumie Suguri, and Italy's Carolina Kostner.

"I just felt a little off today," said the 24-year-old Kwan, who's in danger of missing the global medal stand for the first time since 1995, when she was a ponytailed 14-year-old. "I don't know. I wasn't under me, I was above the ice. I didn't feel like I could bend my legs."

Kwan wasn't the only woman to have trouble yesterday. Arakawa, who's looking to be the first Japanese skater to win two titles, botched four jumps. But she ended up ahead of Kwan because she had much higher base values.

Kwan's program, which includes only six triple jumps and no triple-triple combinations, comes out of the 6.0 era, when technical elements weren't assigned base scores, when grades of execution weren't awarded, and when there was just one artistic mark instead of five.

So when she stepped on the ice here, Kwan was stepping into a world that her rivals have been living in for two seasons but that was foreign to her. "You can only do so much homework," she said. Kwan took her first hit in the opening minute when she doubled the opening triple flip in her three-jump combo and skipped the following two doubles, taking a pair of zeros.

Later, after doubling her triple salchow, Kwan two-footed her triple toe and abandoned the following double toe. "Looking back now, it was like, `Arrggh!,' " she said. "Could have done this, could have done that."

Fortunately, Kwan will get two more chances in tomorrow's short program and Saturday's free skate, and this time, the system will work for her. Under the old format, her qualifying performance would have all but buried her. Now, she's less than 3 points out of the medals. "That's good to hear," Kwan said.

But the real golden chance belongs to the 20-year-old Cohen, who shrugged off a predawn wakeup to practice at 6 a.m. and ended up winning her qualifying group ahead of Ando to rank second behind Slutskaya. "I'm pretty happy with that start," said Cohen, who finished second to Arakawa last year. "I could have done better, but that's OK."

Decidedly not OK was Newton, Mass., native Jennifer Kirk, who ended up 17th after falling twice. "It was really bad," said the 20-year-old Kirk, who got her third ticket to worlds because 15-year-old Kimmie Meissner isn't old enough to compete. "I just didn't feel good today. I don't know what's wrong with my body. It's been a kind of up-and-down season, but I'm a fighter. I'll go back out for two programs and get things sorted out."