ichelle Kwan wouldn't come right out and say she was trying to silence those who thought her time had passed; the four-time national champion is too diplomatic, too savvy for that.
Instead, she let the judges do the talking. Skating her best short program since the virtuoso ode to Rachmaninoff at the 1998 Nationals, Kwan earned seven perfect 6.0s and a pair of 5.9s for presentation, emphatically winning last night's ladies' short program before 10,571 at the US Figure Skating Championships at the FleetCenter and putting herself in position to be the first woman since Janet Lynn to earn five national titles.
''It's always hard when people are criticizing you with jumps,'' Kwan said afterward. ''You're trying your best; it's not like I'm sitting at home watching TV all the time. [But] when I went out there, I forgot everything.''
Inspired by her music, the London Symphony Orchestra's ''East of Eden,'' Kwan started her program with a double axel, followed quickly by a triple lutz-double toe and a triple flip. All were faultless. Her jumps complete and the tension evaporated, she ended with a beautiful spiral sequence. She retrieved a fan's gift of an enormous white teddy bear before skating off to await her marks.
''I think it was just as good,'' said her coach, Frank Carroll, when asked how the performance compared with Kwan's 1998 brilliance, when she set a record for 6.0s in the short program. She tied the mark last night.
Coming into tonight's long program, Kwan is in better shape than she was last year, when she had to climb out of third after falling on a no-brainer jump. After scraping out a victory in the long, she went on to win the World Championships.
Kwan leads as strong a US field as there has been in years. The top seven women all skated clean programs, and that's with three top women - Sasha Cohen, Naomi Nari Nam, and Deanna Stellato - sidelined by injuries. Sitting in second is Sarah Hughes, the 15-year-old from Great Neck, N.Y.; Angela Nikodinov, 20, turned in perhaps the finest short program of her life to earn third. Of the top three women after the short program, the winner of tonight's long program will win the US title.
Sixteen-year-old Jennifer Kirk of Newton, who trains under Nancy Kerrigan's former coaches at her old rink on Cape Cod, is fourth and still in contention to make the three-woman World team. The fact that Kirk couldn't crack the top three after skating smoothly in her home rink exemplified the high quality of the field.
''I think in the United States we have the finest skaters in the world,'' said Carroll. ''The depth is amazing.''
Of the top four women, Nikodinov skated first, in the second group. Although twice a member of the US team at the World Championships, she has been prone to nerves, rough transitions, and lack of stamina. Last night, though, she skated not only cleanly, but fluidly, wobbling a bit on her double axel but landing a triple lutz-double toe combination and triple flip flawlessly.
''When I finished, I felt like I could do half of another program,'' said Nikodinov, who recently left coach Richard Callaghan and has lost 10 pounds since hooking up with a new mentor, Elena Tcherkasskaia, who danced with the Bolshoi Ballet for 22 years. Before Nikodinov took the ice, Tcherkasskaia boosted her sometimes shaky confidence with some advice: ''Ne Boysia,'' meaning ''don't worry.''
The fourth and last group of skaters had Kwan, Hughes, and Kirk skate in succession. Kwan's marks did not go unnoticed by Hughes, who finished third last year behind Kwan and Cohen.
''I heard Michelle's marks when I was going out,'' said Hughes, still sounding amazed a half-hour later. ''She got a lot of 6.0s. Most of the time you don't have to skate after someone who gets those kind of marks. It was my first time, but her marks didn't really affect me. I knew what I had to do, I knew what I wanted to do, and I'm very happy that I did it.''
Despite the solid statement she made last night, Kwan knows she's only a third of the way home, with tonight's score counting for two-thirds of the total. ''You have to get through one hurdle, and then the long program is another hurdle,'' said Kwan. ''You just have to take one thing at a time and say today was great, hopefully tomorrow is just as good.''
