Kwan plans to put on show at Garden

What Michelle Kwan is doing this week is what she has been doing every April since she was 13, barnstorming with her Champions On Ice buddies. If this is Thursday, this must be Durham, N.H. Or is it Durham, N.C.?

''It's fun and crazy at the same time," says Kwan, who'll be here Saturday for two shows at TD Banknorth Garden. ''The worst part of touring is having to pack your bags."

The faces, the arenas, the hotels, the rhythms are the same as they always are. The difference this time is that Kwan is wrapping up a skating season that never really began for her. ''There were so many struggles, so many injuries, so many frustrations," she says. ''It's been so nice just to go out and skate again."

It's been two months since America's most accomplished ice queen abruptly left Olympus, concluding that her injured right groin wouldn't allow her to skate her best at the Winter Games. It was, she says, both the hardest and easiest decision she's ever had to make. ''It wasn't what I wanted to do," Kwan says, ''but I knew I had to do it."

Now, she's in the first fortnight of a four-month, 53-city tour that many fans assume is her farewell, even though the woman is still only 25. ''When people say, 'Why don't you retire?' I think, 'Would you say that to Roger Clemens or Chris Chelios?' " Kwan says.

She may be skating's grande dame, with a career that has spanned four quadrennia, but Kwan hasn't yet uttered the R-word. ''I haven't made any decision," she says. ''Right now, I'm just trying to be healthy. Since 2002, it's always been one day at a time."

Each season, Kwan had said that, but this season she lived it. She never knew how her body would feel from one practice to the next or what it would allow her to do on the ice. Some days, as in her last day in Turin, even a simple triple flip was too much.

The uncertainty began in October, when Kwan strained a ligament in her right hip, and it continued for four months. ''This is what I have," Kwan said in December, after she struggled through a made-for-TV event at BU's Agganis Arena. ''This is it."

Once she'd injured her groin later that week, Kwan knew she wouldn't be fit for the US championships in January, so she withdrew a week before the competition and petitioned to be put directly onto the Olympic team. The rules said that she could, and nobody doubted that the nine-time titlist would have placed in the top three had she been fit.

When Kwan skated her competitive programs at the end of the month, a panel of federation monitors gave her a thumbs-up and she went to Turin as planned. ''Everything was textbook, just as I thought it would happen," she says. ''I wanted to go out and try and win the sucker."

Kwan didn't even make it through her first practice, missing most of her jumps and reinjuring her groin. Midway through a painful and sleepless night, she asked to see a doctor, then decided to withdraw. ''I knew what I needed to do," Kwan says. ''The decision was easy. I had made the promise."

If she wasn't fully fit she would give up her spot, Kwan had vowed even before she'd been put on the roster. She knew she couldn't be ready in time for her event and wasn't going to limp around on one leg just to say she'd been there. ''I respect the sport and the Olympics way too much," she says.

Kwan also wanted to give Emily Hughes, her replacement, enough time to get herself to Italy and settle in. Kwan had been the alternate in 1994 during the Tonya-Nancy soap opera and she knew all about life in five-ringed limbo. ''It was important that Emily have the right focus and get the chance to be in that zone," she said.

So Kwan announced her withdrawal, held a press conference, and left for the States on the first flight the following morning. ''It was nice to be offered to stay, but I just felt it wouldn't be good," she says. ''The spotlight was definitely for the athletes. They worked their whole sporting lifetimes to be at the Olympics and the focus should be on them. I didn't want to be a distraction."

So Kwan went back to California and watched the Games from the couch with the rest of the country. ''Coming back was tough," she says. ''Two seconds ago I was in Italy, walking through the opening ceremonies. Then I was going home."

Yet the countdown clock in her head was still running, as it had been all season. The ladies' short program was Feb. 21, the long program the 23d. Only a few days now, she kept thinking. ''It was strange, definitely," Kwan says. ''I realized that I'd never set foot in the Olympic arena. Maybe it was meant to be."

The toughest part, though, was when her sister Karen, whose husband Peter Oppegard was coaching one of the US pairs, called her on a cellphone from inside the Palavela after the free skate. ''It was so emotional," Kwan says. ''She's like my twin sister, she feels everything I feel. And she started crying."

It wasn't meant to be. Kwan has accepted that, with no regrets, and has moved on. That's what her parents had always preached. ''Make a decision, stick with it," Kwan says. ''Never look back."

Many of her fans want her to continue on to 2010 and Vancouver. ''I've had a lot of people saying, go one more time for that elusive gold medal," Kwan says. ''But if I were to end right this second, I'm very grateful for what I've experienced."

The gold medal (actually gold-plated silver) represents one day out of a career and she understands that now. ''I see it differently than I did when I was 17," she says. ''I was headed for Nagano thinking, 'Gosh, if I don't win it, what then?' I saw it as gold or nothing. After it was over, I reminded myself that I'd had two clean skates at the Olympics. The only thing missing was the color of the medal. I realized that the journey there was what I liked the most."

By now, Kwan has enough glittering hardware -- an Olympic silver and bronze plus five golds, three silvers, and a bronze from the world championships and a dozen medals from nationals, nine of them gold. ''They're all misplaced somewhere," she says.

Her place in the record books is secure and no woman is likely to surpass her record for sustained excellence. ''This has been an incredible dream so far," Kwan says.

The operative words are ''so far." Clemens has not hung up his glove, Chelios has not put away his hockey stick, Kwan is still lacing up her skates. If it's April, she's living out of a suitcase somewhere between Connecticut and Oregon and taking a bow at center ice. That hasn't changed since she wore a ponytail.

''They used to introduce me as 'the 13-year-old Michelle Kwan,' " she says. ''Then, it was 'the 14-year-old Michelle Kwan.' They stopped doing that when I was 15. Now, it'll be 'the new old lady, Michelle Kwan.' "