“I remember when we were young skaters just coming up and you’d cheer for Liz [Punsalan] and Jerod [Swallow] and Naomi [Lang] and Peter [Tchernyshev] going to Worlds,’’ says Ben Agosto.

Now there are two contending couples and if things break their way in February, both of them could make the Olympic podium. That never has come close to happening, but it could in Vancouver. Agosto and partner Tanith Belbin, who made the silver breakthrough in Turin, were second again at last season’s world championships, where compatriots Meryl Davis and Charlie White missed the bronze by .04 points.

With the Grand Prix season nearing its end, both couples are all but certain to qualify for next month’s final in Tokyo. Davis and White already have maxed out by winning the events in Moscow and Nagano. Belbin and Agosto, who won the Cup of China in Beijing, were in the lead after yesterday’s compulsory dance at the Skate America competition here, up by more than 2 points on Russia’s Jana Khokhlova and Sergei Novitski, the reigning European champions.

It says much about the state of American figure skating that less than three months before the Winter Games it’s the dancers who have the best chance at multiple medals of any of the four disciplines.

Evan Lysacek, who easily won last night’s short program ahead of France’s Florent Amodio, is the men’s world champion but his colleagues are the most unstable of elements. Johnny Weir won world bronze in 2008, but didn’t come close to making the team last season. Jeremy Abbott, who won both the Grand Prix and US titles, finished 11th at Worlds.

The pairs are eternal works-in-progress, with no global medals for seven years and nobody in the top eight for the last two. After last night’s short program, which Chinese golden oldies Shen Xue and Zhao Hongbo (a combined 67) won in a walk, two-time US champions Keauna McLaughlin and Rockne Brubaker were sitting in fourth.

And the women, who’ve been off the global podium for three years, have run through five champions in five seasons. This weekend’s poster girl was Sasha Cohen, who hasn’t competed in three years and ended up pulling out with a sore leg Monday. All four Grand Prix events have been claimed by Asians, with Korean world champion Kim Yu Na odds on to win tomorrow.

It used to be that two medals were the norm for the American females at Olympus - Albright and Heiss, Heiss and Roles, Yamaguchi and Kerrigan, Lipinski and Kwan, Hughes and Kwan. This time, it’s highly likely that they’ll be shut out for the first time since 1964, the Games following the 1961 plane crash that killed the entire team.

But the dancers have turned back the clock to the ’70s, when there almost always were Yanks on the world podium. Not only have Belbin and Agosto become fixtures there, with four medals in five years, their teammates also have been climbing the ladder. Last season the United States went 2-4-11 in Los Angeles, the third straight time that all three entries made the top dozen, and Americans have won three of the last five world junior crowns.

It may not be a Russian-style dynasty, but by American standards there’s been uncommon stability. Belbin and Agosto have been together since 1998 and Davis and White, who are only 22, go back a year earlier.

When Belbin and Agosto withdrew from last season’s nationals because of his back ailment, Davis and White grabbed the crown and the five-time champs may have a devilish time reclaiming it in January in Spokane, Wash. “The US championships will be a great competition because it’ll be a competition,’’ says Agosto.

What helped make the Russians dominant for decades was their constant intramural battle, always the pressure from below. Simply making the team was an achievement. Now it’s becoming that way for the Americans. “It’ll really be good for us to have that push before the Games,’’ says Belbin.

No more coronations, no more one-couple teams, as there was in Lillehammer, when Punsalan and Swallow were the only US entry and finished 15th. There were three last time in Turin and there’ll be three again in Vancouver. And maybe, for the first time ever, two medals.

John Powers can be reached at jpowers@globe.com.