By Kim Tong-hyung
Staff Reporter
Kim Yu-na is a 19-year-old who spent the last 12 years polishing her craft on frozen ice indoors. Over the next five days, Kim, perhaps the one true megastar of figure staking, will get the chance to prove she does that better than anyone on the planet.
Kim, who skated out her first practice at the Vancouver Winter Olympics Sunday (KST), is seen as the clear-cut favorite to top the women's competition and the expectations couldn't be possibly higher.
In South Korea, where she is as popular as kimchi, nearly everyone seems confident that the country's first ever medal in figure staking will be gold.
If Kim feels burdened by having the nation's prayers resting on her delicate shoulders in her Olympic debut, she is hiding it well. Meeting briefly with reporters after her practice in Vancouver, Kim seemed to be her usual, monotone self ― calm, collected and confident.
"As I arrived here after training in Toronto, the time differential and the time spent on the road wasn't much of a problem. Physically, I feel similar to how I felt in Toronto," Kim said. During the practice that continued for about 40 minutes, Kim executed her spins, and spiral and step sequences to George Gershwin's Piano Concerto in F major, which she will use in Friday's free skating final. Then after turning off the music, Kim went through her jump moves for the short program and free skate.
"It was my first practice, so I had to try all of my jumps,” Kim said.
"The nature of the ice was different to what I expected, so it was difficult to get my moves off at first, but the more I practiced, the more I understood the ice. It was a good practice as I was able to check my jump and spin moves," she said.
Kim will open her bid to become South Korea's first Olympic figure skating champion in the women's short program on Wednesday and the free skating final is scheduled two days later.
To focus on the competition, Kim won't be giving any media interviews before the women's short program.
Snatching the Olympic gold will allow Kim to achieve a rare "triple-crown," adding the final and most important piece of hardware to her 2009 World Championships and Four Continents trophies.
Since entering the senior competition during the 2006-2007 season, Kim has topped 12 of the 16 international events she has competed in, and finished second once and third three times.
But Kim won't be exactly waltzing her way to the top of the podium, that is, if Japan's Asada Mao gets to have any say.
Kim will see a number of difficult rivals in Vancouver, including Ando Miki, another Japanese contender; 2007 world champion, United States champion Rachael Flatt; and Canada's own Joannie Rochette, but Asada is clearly considered as the most threatening adversary. Although Kim lost just twice in the past two seasons, Asada was responsible for both of them, beating her Korean rival at the 2008 World Championships and the 2008-2009 Grand Prix Final.
As soon as Asada stepped off the plane in Vancouver Saturday, a day after Kim, she let her intentions of dethroning Kim be known.
"I want a medal. It should be gold as a matter of course," Asada was quoted as saying by AFP.
"I had solid training in Japan. Now I want to train on the Vancouver rink with a mental image of the competition."
It could be said that the Kim-Asada rivalry is one of the fiercest in all of winter sports, but Asada's struggles in past months had made the competition look lopsided.
Since losing to Kim in the season-opening Grand Prix in Paris last year, Asada had struggled with her form. She finished fifth in the second Grand Prix event in Moscow in October and failed to qualify for December's Grand Prix final in Tokyo, and was forced to watch Kim bask in the glory on her home turf.
However, Asada managed to regain her sharpness in time for the Olympics, setting a personal best of 201.87 points to win her fifth national title in December and earn the rights to represent her country in Vancouver along with Ando and Suzuki Akiko.
Although Kim is considered as a more complete skater than her main rival, Asada has one distinctive weapon the Korean has no prayer of matching ― the triple axel.
The triple axel, or the 3.5-revolution jump, is considered the women's equivalent of the men's quadruple, and Asada is the only female skater in the world who consistently executes the difficult skill in international competition.
It remains to be seen whether Asada will be trying the triple axel in Vancouver, but even if she completes it successfully, it won't be enough to give her an automatic victory over Kim, according to Kim's coach, Brian Orser.
"People will be discussing that, but they're people who don't understand the system," Orser told the AFP.
"We saw that in the men's event, it's not just the quad, but all the other elements where you can earn more points."
Although Kim declined to discuss her chances for the gold in her chat with reporters, Orser, who took the silver in the men's competition in the 1988 Calgary Winter Games, claims his pupil will be "unbeatable" if she skates her best.
Indeed, Kim appeared to be in a league of her own during her recent record-breaking hot streak. She set a world best score of 210.03 points in last year's Grand Prix event in Paris, helped by a record 133.95 points in the free program. Kim also owns the short program world record of 76.28 points, which was set at November's Skate America.
In figure skating, the short program consists of eight elements that must be completed - three jumps, three spins and two step sequences - which the skater can execute in any order within a time limit of 2 minutes and 50 seconds.
The 24 skaters with the best marks will advance to the free skate, which have no required elements but challenges the skater to express the best of his or her skill and artistry.
If Asada is best known for her triple axel, Kim's calling card is the triple lutz-triple toe loop combination, a move that could prove to be the difference in Vancouver.
Kim had previously used the triple flip as her first move in the triple-triple, but decided to switch to the triple lutz after her triple flip was faulted by judges in recent international tournaments.