In the decade since compulsory figures were eliminated from figure skating, making it possible for new talents to get immediate rewards, each year before the Olympics has produced a revelation in women’s singles.
In 1991 it was Tonya Harding of the U.S., coming from the also-rans at the 1990 U.S. championships to win the national title, get second in the worlds and then finish fourth in the 1992 Olympics.
In 1993 it was Oksana Baiul of Ukraine, coming from 12th in the 1992 Soviet championships to win the world title and then the 1994 Olympic gold medal.
In 1997 it was Tara Lipinski of the U.S., coming from 15th in the 1996 worlds to win the world title and then the 1998 Olympic gold.
As the season before the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Games began Thursday with Skate America, the first of the annual Champions Series competitions, the chances for such a discovery included two Russians skating here, Viktoria Volchkova and Elena Sokolova.
Michelle Kwan, 20, the reigning world champion, was heavily favored to win a fifth Skate America title in a women’s event that opened Thursday. She utterly dominated the short program, the only one of the 11 competitors to skate without a mistake.
Using a new choreographer, Olympic ice dance champion Christopher Dean, Kwan seemed more at ease with the technical parts of the program than the choreography for a short program skated to Eric Clapton’s music from the movie “Rush.” Her longtime choreographer, Lori Nichol, did the long program she will unveil Saturday.
“I’m getting another way to look at skating through [Dean’s] eyes,” Kwan said. “A lot of it is footwork, and I haven’t perfected that.”
Kwan’s jumps, including a triple flip, were as solid as they could have been, but she still needs to forge a connection between her movements and the music.
“It’s mentally hard when you do a program for the first time,” she said. “You’re afraid you’re going to forget something. It’s supposed to look natural, but it doesn’t.”
Sokolova, 20, has yet to fulfill promise shown in 1998, when she was seventh in the Olympics and had two firsts and a second in Champions Series events. She slumped after that and did not earn a place at worlds in either 1999 or 2000, leading her to switch coaches.
Since May, she has been working with Alexei Mishin, coach of 1994 Olympic champion Alexei Urmanov. Sokolova made just one jump mistake in the short program, stepping out of the double axel.
“Sometimes we need to change something in life to be better,” Sokolova said.
Volchkova, 18, finished third in the 1999 European Championships but failed to make Russia’s world team last year. She botched two of her four jumps Thursday.
