Hughes currently has a cold and her back is slightly out of kilter, but she insisted, "I'm good; I'm ready." Having faced the music of losing the national title by a mere .82 of a point (to reigning world champion Kimmie Meisner) in January, Hughes is ready to make some music in Japan. Ask her if she has reserved a spot -- near the box on her shelf that holds two national championship medals (bronze and silver) and hardware from this season's Cup of China (bronze) and Four Continents (silver) -- for a potential world medal, she allowed, "There are a few spaces open."
Her routines -- she skates her short program to the music "Carmen" -- "are more like a story now," Retzkin said, than when she first put them on the ice in late October. Skater, coach and choreographers have shuffled movements a bit in search of the sport's nirvana of a clean, logically arranged program.
"With the new scoring system," Hughes said, "it's like a game. To get the most points, you want to be able to do what you can do, the best you can do it."
So she was able to leave out the one jump -- triple loop -- that victimized her at both the 2006 nationals and Olympics -- and still score a personal best at last month's Four Continents championships by landing six triples in her long program -- two triple Lutzes, two triple flips, a triple Salchow and triple toe. Plus a 21/2-rotation double Axel.
Something to write about in English class, maybe. Meanwhile, she is awaiting acceptance letters from college applications -- Columbia, NYU, Harvard, Yale among them -- and noted that, "the worlds will end, and I'll come home to find out about college. April 1, I think."
