When Michelle Kwan withdrew two days after the Olympic opening ceremonies in Turin, it was Hughes who flew over, stepped in, and finished a creditable seventh. So a mere drive up the Northway was a breeze. It was the short-notice skating that was a challenge.

“I think there were some nerves,’’ Hughes concluded, after she was the first one on for the short program and promptly singled her opening triple lutz and ended up sitting in 11th place.

A wobble or two was understandable in her first international competition in 12 months. Hughes missed the last two US championships with injuries and had competed only once all season. But with Kwan in graduate school at Tufts, Cohen sidelined by calf tendinitis, and Kimmie Meissner rehabbing from last summer’s freak kneecap dislocation, the 20-year-old Harvard junior is the only remaining member of the Class of 2006 who’s available to face the music.

Hughes gets more than thanks and a T-shirt for showing up here. Because she’s competing in a Grand Prix event, she also gets a bye to the January nationals in Spokane, Wash., where the two-woman team will be determined for the Vancouver Olympics.

“Just being here is testing the waters for Nationals,’’ said Hughes, who otherwise would have had to compete in this week’s Eastern sectionals in Delaware to earn her ticket.

Once she gets to Spokane, Hughes figures to have as good a chance as anyone. Not since 1964, when the program still was rebuilding after the 1961 plane crash, have so many women had a reasonable shot at making it to the Games.

That’s what happens when you’ve had five champions in five years and seven medalists in the last three. Alissa Czisny, Rachael Flatt, Caroline Zhang, Mirai Nagasu, Ashley Wagner, Meissner, Hughes - the list grows every winter. Injuries, puberty, fragile psyches, competitive jitters - the reasons vary. What’s indisputable is that for the first time in nearly a half-century, no American woman figures to be a top contender at the Games.

The story line for Vancouver will be whether world champ Kim Yu Na, the sport’s “Flying Queen,’’ can hold off a trio of Japanese rivals and win South Korea’s first figure skating medal in any discipline. Last night, Kim blew everybody away with a flawless skate, piling up a record 76.28 points that put her nearly 17 points ahead of Flatt.

The Far East owns the women’s side of the sport now. Shizuka Arakawa won the gold in Turin (Japan’s first) and Asians have claimed the last three world titles and seven of nine medals.

Since Meissner won the gold at the thinned-out post-Olympic world championships in 2006, the Americans haven’t even made the podium. Last season on their home ice in Los Angeles, Flatt and Czisny finished fifth and 11th, respectively, and failed to earn the third Olympic spot that the United States has taken for granted since the ’20s.

More often than not, the world champion coming into the Games has been an American: Tenley Albright (1956), Carol Heiss (1960), Peggy Fleming (1968), Linda Fratianne (1980), Rosalynn Sumners (1984), Kristi Yamaguchi (1992), Tara Lipinski (1998), and Kwan (2002). More often than not, the lady-in-waiting was a medal contender, too.

That’s why there traditionally has been so much domestic buzz about skating as the Games approached, because there always was the promise of gold. A US female has won at least a silver every time since 1988. This time, even bronze would be an achievement. That’s why the attention has shifted to the men and the dancers, who’ve already proven themselves at the planetary level.

Evan Lysacek, who became the first homeboy in six years to win Skate America last night when he outpointed Canada’s Shawn Sawyer, 237.72-203.91, is the world champion. Tanith Belbin and Ben Agosto, who won global silver last season, are at the top of the table going into today’s free dance, more than 13 points ahead of Russia’s Jana Khokhlova and Sergei Novitski. The women simply aren’t part of the conversation.

Time was when the US titlist automatically was an Olympic favorite, but that’s when she used to reign for a quadrennium. In the day of the revolving door, anybody who can put together two decent performances can grab the crown for a year.

That’s one reason Hughes decided to take time off from college and turn up at last month’s North Atlantic regionals. She has been to Olympus and wouldn’t mind a return trip without going as an EMT.

“I’m not planning that,’’ she says.

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