Weir's timing off from get-go

TURIN -- Olympic lesson No. 1: The Pressure Is No Myth.

''I've never skated for a medal before," sighed Johnny Weir after his crash-and-burn in the men's free skate last evening. ''Everything felt fine all day. I don't know why this happened."

Except that he does know. A bit later, he admitted that he was ''terrified."

Johnny Weir began the evening in second place, several light years behind eventual gold medalist Evgeny Plushenko and a bit ahead of Switzerland's Stephane Lambiel. A medal was well within reach. He simply needed to be efficient. Anything close to his short program would have guaranteed at least a bronze. But he came away a disappointing sixth after a listless, mistake-filled, truncated performance that was littered with misses and program omissions. (For the unpleasant details, please see Brother Powers.) And, please, forget about the bus business you may already have heard about. Johnny bombed out, period.

''I can't use the bus as an excuse," he said. ''I was terrible. I know it was a bad performance."

It is undeniably true that Johnny Weir's evening got off to a bad start when he arrived late to the Palavela, bounding in at 9:20 p.m., much too close to performance time. He had missed a bus from the Olympic Village to the arena. Missing a bus or misreading a schedule is sort of an American Olympic tradition. He now joins the ranks of sprinters and boxers who have either arrived similarly late to a competition or have missed it altogether. I mean, you think we'd learn . . .

''The buses usually leave every 10 minutes for the arena," he explained. ''But on the day of the competition they leave every half-hour. I missed the bus. But we got here. I started. That's it."

Excuse me, a bus? Where was the limo? Where was the rickshaw? Where were the imported Greco-Roman heavyweight wrestlers carrying him in on a pallet? In the past week, Johnny Weir had jumped up front and center as the No. 1 American Olympic celebrity, the kind of quick-witted, irreverent, spotlight-loving athlete with enormous crossover appeal to the pop culture sort who is only mildly interested in sport. You'd think the US Olympic Committee would have done everything in its power to maximize his emotional state on this most important of evenings. Johnny Weir shouldn't have been hailing an Olympic volunteer van just to get to the competition.

''I was waiting for anything that would get me here," he said.

It wasn't as if Johnny Weir was going to win a gold. That bit of business had been decided the minute Mr. Plushenko was issued a credential. The Russian is currently skating in his own private league.

''There is really quite a distance between him and the rest of us in terms of maturity and experience," Weir declared. ''As far as skating is concerned, if we can get the mileage and put enough into our programs, perhaps we can be comparable."

Johnny Weir is capable of great skating. He proved that Tuesday evening with a superb performance in his short program, richly deserving the second spot behind the nonpareil Russian. But who knows what's been going on in his head since? Perhaps he talked too much earlier in the week, putting too much pressure on himself. Perhaps he started thinking about the juicy ramifications of a post-medal life. Perhaps he simply started thinking too much. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. No one knows.

''I couldn't tell anything from the warmups," he said, adding that the loudspeaker noise was jarring, reminding him of ''an NFL game."

He was fine at the start of his program, nailing a triple axel-triple toe loop combo satisfactorily, but shortly thereafter things began going south, and once things started to go badly, he could not get himself back on track. ''I was off," he explained. ''You wait for four years, but so many things go into what constitutes a good performance."

So many things, and yet who knows what they really are? Why, for example, did Evan Lysacek skate so well? Here's a guy who was so sick Wednesday with a stomach flu that he seriously doubted he could perform. Here's a guy who had no idea what he'd be capable of when the music started last evening. And here's a guy who put up the third-best score in the free skate, moving himself from 10th place to a very admirable fourth. Somehow, Evan Lysacek was able to reach down and pull out a maximum effort. I mean, he was great, by any scoring system.

Johnny Weir, meanwhile, imploded, getting worse as the program wore on. The passionate, loyal Americans booed and even some of the neutrals whistled (the universal sign of displeasure, outside of North America, anyway) when his scores were announced, but no one knew better than Johnny Weir himself that the judges had gotten it right. His ''technical component" score of 61.27 in the newfangled scoring system that has replaced the tried-and-true 6.0 put him 11th among last night's 24 competitors. Johnny Weir had gotten into everyone's heart, but the judges had no choice but to be the bearers of very bad news.

One thing Johnny Weir learned from last night's disappointing experience was that the new scoring system makes championship figure skating a very different sport than it was before. With the old system, everyone started out theoretically equal, and then technical points were subtracted for failure to maintain perfection. And ''Presentation" was highly subjective. Now you construct a score by successfully executing maneuvers. You add, rather than subtract. It calls for a different mind-set.

''I was thinking in my mind, 'What do I have to do to fix it?' Weir explained. ''You're thinking about how to score points. I have to learn that when things go wrong not to think like that."

Johnny Weir is 21 years old. There is no reason to think he won't learn from this sobering experience and that he won't be back in Vancouver four years hence. Let's hope so. He is a breath of athletic fresh air. His wit never goes on leave. Here he was, maybe 15 minutes after his great disappointment, explaining how his life has changed since arriving in Turin and becoming a media star.

''I had 827 e-mail fan mail messages from fans," he said. ''I told a good friend of mine about that, and he said, 'Now you're a D-level celebrity.' I said, 'Great, I'm Kathy Griffin.' "

Nah, he's Johnny Weir, and skating needs him. Sure, everyone likes Scott Hamilton, but Sarajevo was a long time ago. The men need a Star, not just a champion, and if not Johnny Weir, who?

Bob Ryan is a Globe columnist. His e-mail address is ryan@globe.com.