| | LYON, France--Michelle Kwan, who lost to Maria Butyrskaya at the World Championships, gets another shot at the Russian in the International Skating Union Grand Prix Final.
The final, which begins Friday, brings together the top point scorers in the four events from a six-meet series between October and December.
The men's, pairs and ice dance events also are being contested. But the women's event between the past and present world championships highlights the competition. After the long and short programs, the top four skaters go against each other Saturday in a super final, executing different programs.
Last March, in Helsinki, Finland, Kwan was ailing with the flu and made some technical mistakes that allowed Butyrskaya, at 27, to become the oldest woman to take an individual world title. Russian skaters took all four world titles.
Since then, things have changed. Kwan, 19, won two events in the Grand Prix series while establishing herself.
| |  | | | Butyrskaya knows that Kwan wants to take her title. |
Kwan was world champion in 1996 and 1998 and the Olympic silver medalist in Nagano, Japan, but wanted to try to balance competition and classes.
She won Skate America and Skate Canada on the ISU circuit. On the lucrative pro-am circuit she has beaten Butyrskaya three times in competitions with less-stringent technical requirements.
Three other Russians with impressive credentials, Irina Slutskaya, Julia Soldatova and Victora Volchkova, also are entered.
Slutskaya is a two-time European champion who beat Butyrskaya at the Russian nationals in December. Soldatova finished third at the World Championships last year and Volchkova was third at the European Championships.
The men's event lost some of its luster when two-time world and European champion Alexei Yagudin withdrew because of foot and boot problems. According to his coach, Tatiana Tarasova, the boot split in training in Moscow on Monday and Yagudin slightly stretched a tendon in his foot.
The Russian Federation asked the ISU for a medical bye and replaced him with another Russian, Alexander Abt.
Without Yagudin, who won three of the Grand Prix events, the favorite is now Evgeny Plushchenko, who won the other three and beat Yagudin for the Russian title.
Elvis Stojko of Canada, who won the world title three times before Yagudin, also is entered, but American hopes are on Tim Goebel, who became the first skater to do three quads in a program at Skate America, where he was second to Yagudin.
Chinese Guo Zhengxin, the first skater to do two quads in a routine, also is part of the six-man final along with Frenchman Vincent Restencourt.
Pairs competition has reigning world champions Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze trying to rebound from relatively poor performances last fall. Russian teammates Maria Petrova and Alexei Tikhonov have won three events this season.
In ice dance competition, France's Marina Anissina and Gwendal Peizerat are favorites in their hometown. World champions Angelika Krylova, suffering from a back injury, and Oleg Ovsiannikov of Russia are not competing this season.
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