Kim Yu
SOCHI, Russia - Her choice of music for Wednesday's short program, 'Send in the Clowns,' suggested departure and regret for Kim Yu-na of South Korea, the defending Olympic women's figure skating champion.
But when two other favorites showed vulnerability and fell, Kim, 23, narrowly held on to first place with a mature and elegant routine, even if it did not rise to her performance from four years ago at the Vancouver Games.
Entering Thursday's long program with 74.92 points, Kim will attempt to become only the third woman to win consecutive gold medals after Sonja Henie of Norway (1928, 1932, 1936) and Katarina Witt of the former East Germany (1984, 1988).
Trailing Kim by less than a point is a Russian teenager, but not the one almost everyone expected. Yulia Lipnitskaya, 15, the European champion with the impossible flexibility and blurring spins, fell on a triple flip and tumbled to fifth place.
Instead, her teammate Adelina Sotnikova, 17, skated powerfully to 'Carmen,' received a higher technical score than Kim and surprisingly took second place with 74.64 points.
In third, also less than a point behind Kim, was Carolina Kostner, 27, the 2012 world champion from Italy. Kim skated a more demanding technical program, but Kostner was graceful in a performance to 'Ave Maria' and received higher marks for performance, transitions and linking footwork, choreography and musical interpretation. She scored 74.12 points.
Gracie Gold, 18, the American champion, landed inexactly on three jumps, but managed to save them, a skill she learned in recent months under Coach Frank Carroll, and took fourth place with 68.63 points.
Once overcome by panic and fear of failure about not making the Olympic team, Gold has been far more resilient lately. She said she felt sick to her stomach before Wednesday's routine, but managed to rescue a shaky opening triple lutz to complete the triple toe loop combination.
'I thought to myself, This is my Olympic moment. Am I going to be on my butt?' Gold said. 'No. The Olympics is not the place to play it safe. I'm going for it.'
The biggest disappointment of the night was Mao Asada, 23 of Japan, the reigning Olympic silver medalist, who has grown inconsistent with her signature jump, the triple axel. She is one of only a small number of women, including Midori Ito and Tonya Harding, who have landed the difficult jump. It is the only one launched from a forward position and requires three and a half revolutions in the air.
Asada fell on the triple axel with her opening jump Wednesday and had a disastrous skate, finishing 16th with 55.51 points.
At the 2010 Vancouver Games, Kim gave one of the greatest Olympic performances of any era. She conveyed sultriness and a hint of danger as a Bond girl, ending her short program with a pistol-pointing smile, then won the gold medal with an airy, ethereal free skate to music from Gershwin.
Kim has become one of the most popular celebrities in South Korea, and, a year ago, she defied the convention that a skater must perform a season's worth of events on the Grand Prix circuit to remain at the highest level. After seldom competing, Kim showed up at the 2013 world championships in London, Ontario, and won by more than 20 points.
This Olympic season, though, has been disrupted and uncertain. Kim injured her right foot in a fall and missed about six weeks of training, along with the Grand Prix circuit. She arrived in Sochi, having competed only in a small event in Zagreb, Croatia, and at the South Korean championships.
After an anxious warm-up Wednesday, Kim gave a flowing if flawed performance in a sparkly chartreuse costume.
The judges rewarded her bounding and fluid triple-lutz, triple toe loop combination but found flaws in her footwork sequence and layback spin, which seemed somewhat slow and not wholly formed. Her score of 74.92 points was 3.5 points lower than Kim received four years ago in Vancouver.
'In warm-up, I was very nervous; I couldn't jump at all,' Kim said. 'But I tried to believe in myself and believed in what I've done before. I felt like I was dreaming. I had a lot of thoughts when I was giving my performance.'
Afterward, Kim put her hands to her head. Looking ahead to Thursday, the risk for her is that she will be judged by her performance in 2010, not by her current merit. Four years ago, Kim was the rising star. This time it was Lipnitskaya.
'Now it's really tempting to judge her, not so much against the field, but against herself,' Scott Hamilton, the 1984 Olympic champion, said of Kim. 'If you feel like she maybe isn't what she was four years ago, maybe it's because we've grown accustomed to her. You've got to guard against that because it can create a level of prejudice, where you are not allowing her to stand on her merit but on the magic that was created four years ago.'
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