he question is asked more frequently now, even though its answer should be obvious. Sometimes the question is posed to Michelle Kwan like this:
Why?
It's a loaded question, because it can be interpreted as Kwan being asked to leave. She is the best amateur female skater in the United States, the winner of the last four US Figure Skating Championships. She won again last night at the FleetCenter, so the one-word loaded question lives. Why? As in, why stay when you can become a professional? Why? As in, why stay when you are getting old?
Forget about the pros. The pros already have Kristi Yamaguchi and Tara Lipinski. The pros don't need this ''aged'' 20-year-old performer as much as fellow amateurs (and observers) do.
Almost every sport - figure skating included - has a way of rearranging the way we think about age. A 37-year-old pitcher may be old for baseball, but a 37-year-old partner at a law firm might be referred to as a kid. An old cornerback who plays football becomes a fuzzy-faced boy wonder if he goes straight from retirement to head coaching. And the same figure skater who is known as a veteran champion can step on a college campus and be asked, ''Can I see some ID, please?''
It was funny listening to Kwan stories all week. When some of the hard-core followers of the sport described the 20-year-old Californian, it sounded as if they were chatting about Bob Hope. The big story with Kwan is that she still competes as an amateur. She competes even if she has won nationally and internationally. She competes even if she is an oldie on ice, a woman who has been around so long she is a footnote in an old pulp tale that now has its own shorthand: Tonya and Nancy.
Kwan was 14 when Nancy Kerrigan was whacked on her knee by a Tonya Harding zealot during the 1994 US Championships in Detroit. That incident brought so much amateur analysis from amateur psychologists that the results from the amateur championships were almost secondary. You know who finished second? Kwan. In US Championships, she has been either second or first since '94.
Because of this success and her old age (she was the third-oldest female competitor this week), there are some who believe Kwan should move on and give younger skaters a chance.
No way she should do that. I hope that on Inauguration Day 2013, the 32-year-old Kwan still is trying to win amateur titles. As inappropriate as the phrase is today for athletes, ''role model'' accurately describes Kwan. In fact, with the way things are going now in sports, Role Model is teetering on the ledge of a skyscraper, minutes away from ending it all. This is not to say Kwan is a superhero, but it is her lack of supernatural heroics that makes her worthy of emulation.
Michelle Kwan, who was on national television last night, is talented. And normal. It's nice to hear that about a great athlete, isn't it?
She goes to UCLA. Her dad, Danny, likes to surf the Internet. Some of her best friends could tell you more about Axl Rose than double axels. If she is on a wild ego trip because of her fame, she is doing a wonderful job of hiding this self-importance. Her age means that she will have to wait six months before she is legally able to do some serious Hollywood clubbing.
(OK, I'll give you that last one: It's difficult to imagine a bouncer turning Kwan away at the door on Hip-Hop Night. ''Sorry, Michelle. You have the greatest triple lutz-double toe that I've ever seen, but I can't let you in tonight.'')
There were 15,173 fans inside the FleetCenter last night, and one of them held up a sign that read: ''Inaugurate Michelle.'' The sign-holder apparently spoke for many, because when Kwan finished her long program, the ice became cluttered with stuffed animals and flowers. One person even tossed a massive purse on the ice. At that moment, it really wasn't about the money because the purse was empty.
It's not just skating. Every sport could use a few more Kwans. Let her stay as long as she wants. Give her a 10-year qualifying exemption if she'd like it.
You have to go back to the 1960s (Peggy Fleming) and '70s (Janet Lynn) to find a American female skater who has been so dominant on ice. Winning four straight US Championships is difficult for anyone, whether they be 20 or 17. As for Kwan The Personality, all you have to do is read the sports pages to see how valuable her - and here's another near-extinct sports word - kindness is.
Young skaters, year after year, need to see that. If they think they enjoy watching Kwan skate marvelously to ''Song of the Black Swan,'' they also might like to hear her talk about a bad day in Nashville in 1997. She was the defending world champ going into the US Championships then. She was first after the short program before ''Weissing'' it the next day. That is, she had a day similar to the one Michael Weiss had yesterday. She finished second. She dealt with it.
Last night, she had a small problem that could have become an issue if she hadn't taken a deep breath and squashed it. Her program called for a triple toe-triple toe, but she did a double-double. That meant she would have to improvise, which she did.
''We actually didn't train for that,'' she said, looking at coach Frank Carroll. Kwan was then asked about the stuff she does train for, the US Championships that she has cradled and claimed as her own. She said she handles winning better now because she knows what to expect.
''It was harder [during her younger days] when someone was whispering in my ear,'' she said. ''Now I'm able to turn that volume down.''
She did it this year, last year, and the year before that. The 2002 Championships will be in Los Angeles. She has to be there. The event will be incomplete without her.
Michael Holley is a Globe columnist. His e-mail address is holley@globe.com.
