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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Kwan puts her hip to the test as she gets back on ice

Jimmy Golen Associated Press

BOSTON – Michelle Kwan will unveil a new routine today as she gets it ready for the U.S. Championships.

The practice she really needs, though, she isn’t going to get.

The U.S. Figure Skating Challenge at Boston University’s Agganis Arena will use an “American Idol”-style, phone-in voting system to determine the winners. That means Kwan, who’s missed the past two months with a strained ligament in her right hip, will go to Nationals next month with just one competition under the new scoring system adopted in the wake of the Salt Lake City judging scandal.

“The new system is a big enough challenge,” Kwan said Saturday. “I’d rather have that as my main focus.”

Instead, the five-time world and nine-time U.S. champion will have to worry about her new routine and her injury.

“It’s manageable,” Kwan said. “It’s not 100 percent, but I’m getting better. So I’m optimistic that over the next two months I can push as hard as I can to Nationals.

“I’m being very gentle,” she said. “It’s a gentle push.”

Kwan hurt her right hip and withdrew from the Oct. 6 Figure Skating Classic in St. Paul, Minn. She had hoped to return for the Cup of China in Beijing, but wasn’t able to make it back and missed the entire Grand Prix season.

To get used to the scoring system, which abandoned the traditional perfect score of 6.0, Kwan had some judges come to practice to tell her what she was doing right or wrong.

“But unfortunately, I didn’t compete,” she said. “You deal with what you have. It’s never a good time (to be injured). I would like to have competed in the Grand Prix season.”

Of this weekend’s fan-judged competition, Kwan said: “It’s a good opportunity for me to get out there. It will be nice just to go out there for my own good – see where I’m at.”

Kwan’s last serious injury was a stress fracture in her foot before the 1998 Olympics. This time, the injury wasn’t just a problem when she skated – even walking was a problem.

“It wasn’t like I could avoid the triple Lutz, or a certain jump, because everything hurt,” she said. “It was getting frustrating. You sit back and watch the competitions go by, going through the programs in my head.”

Two months ago, Kwan could only be on the ice for about 30 minutes at a time; when her training is in full-swing, it’s more like three hours.

“I was thinking, ‘Thirty minutes on the ice? Is this a joke? You’re supposed to be training for the Olympics,’ ” she said. Building back up to a regular training schedule “was so gradual. I would have to go by how I felt.”

Still, Kwan is optimistic that she can be ready for the championships.

“I’ve done this before,” she said, noting that in Christmas of 1998 she was still having trouble with the double Axel. “The thing is just making sure I don’t have any more setbacks.”