Bronze the Hardest Way

Hughes takes risks but Kwan wins

Cleveland -- Figure skating is a double-dog-dare-you sport that quickly is getting to the triple-dog and quadruple-dog-dare-you stage. Bars keep getting raised, antes upped, lines drawn in the sand. But the kids, with Kings Point's 14-year-old Sarah Hughes prominent among them, just keep coming, keep stepping over the line.

For last night's national figure skating championships finale, the women's long program, Hughes attacked by mapping out the most technically difficult game plan among the title contenders: two triple jump-triple jump combinations, three other triple-revolution jumps and two double Axels, the toughest of any double jumps because they actually consist of 2 1/2 turns in the air.

No American woman ever had attempted two triple combinations in one routine. Only one woman in the world, Russia's Irina Slutskaya last month, ever had tried and landed two. "Sarah can do these things, so you want to go highest technical difficulty you can," Hughes' coach, Robin Wagner said.

Alas, Hughes was hoisted on her own petard. Skating first in the final group of six, she completed her first combination stylishly and seemed to be warming up to the battle when she pulled back on the second half of the second combination. Then, seconds before the end of her four-minute program, she lost concentration and fell on her last triple-jump attempt.

Ultimately, that bumped Hughes from the second place she earned in Friday night's short program, leaving her third as Michelle Kwan vaulted from third to win her fourth U.S. title, while 15-year-old Californian Sasha Cohen slipped from first to second. Both Kwan and Cohen, like Hughes, fell once during their long programs, but the judges preferred Kwan's presentation overwhelmingly.

All three technically qualify to represent the United States in next month's World Championships in Nice, France, though Cohen, because of new age restrictions, first must win a medal at the world junior championships in two weeks. Hughes, though she is younger, already is assured of a second consecutive trip to the worlds, where she placed an impressive seventh last year.

"That's the main thing," Hughes said. "And I'm on the podium for the first time."

She admitted: "It's not easy to be in the nationals. But I'm very happy with the way I handled myself, and I'm happy with the way I skated. I fought through the program and tried to make every moment count, because I knew if I didn't, I'm going to regret it later."

Wagner doubted that Hughes was as happy with her skating as she said, because "she's a perfectionist; I know she always expects more of herself."

But Hughes had her handy smile ready as she came off the ice, and Wagner pronounced herself "happy. I was very pleased because she held herself together beautifully. And to pull off at least one of the triple-triples is wonderful."

So if anything, the trend toward more risk-taking will move more quickly. Kwan sounded like the pursuer, rather than the accomplished veteran, when she reminded that "I have to up the ante." Her coach, Frank Carroll, readily agreed.

"Once something's been done, it has to be done," Carroll said. "Once Linda Fratianne [whom he coached to the Olympics two decades ago] did triples, the ladies all had to do them. Michelle and I are very realistic to think two triple-triples will probably have to be done. That's the way the game is. That's the way of sport."

Wagner noted that, even before Slutskaya had showed off her two triple-triples, she and Hughes had been plotting the same for last night. "That's what competition is," Wagner said, "and, as I said to Sarah, 'Isn't it great to be first at something?' "

They planned a triple salchow and triple loop, which Hughes pulled off effortlessly last night. But then the triple toe, triple loop became a triple toe followed by a bailout. "Sometimes when she has triple-triple," Wagner said, "when she completes the first, she's not prepared for the second one, because it happens so quickly. She kind of forgets she has the second triple to do."

So the daring goes on for the Great Neck North High School freshman, who began skating at such a young age that she doesn't even remember it. "I can remember being really young and taking group lessons," she said. "We played 'red light, green light.' " She can't even remember the first time she landed a double jump. Too long ago.

But the hours of on-ice training, and of a stretching and strengthening system called Pilates, and ballet classes have brought her into a class with Kwan, who at 19 admits she is just trying to keep up.