Yuna KIM (KOR)

SOCHI, Russia – Yuna Kim, the consistently elegant reigning Olympic champion, said her legs felt dead during her warmup skate, a feeling that produced an awkward landing on a practice jump, the kind she seldom experiences.

The fans inside the Iceberg Skating Palace gasped at the sight. Kim's face expressed puzzlement and suddenly it felt like maybe, just maybe, this was when the icon known as "Queen Yuna" might begin to fade.
She didn't.
Kim shrugged off nerves and doubts, found her legs and delivered a brilliant and beautiful short program for a score of 74.92, enough to finish the night in the lead heading into Thursday's long program.

"My legs didn't move, and I couldn't do my jumps properly," Kim said. “When I was on the ice I was trembling. I was very nervous, my legs started shaking. … I tried to believe in myself and believe in my practices."

In the end, Wednesday was about how the 23-year-old Kim, one of the greatest skaters of all time, reasserted herself. Her combination of floating leaps and flowing spins is almost impossible to match, even after she took two years off from competition between the Vancouver Games and now.
But surprisingly, Kim, who is known for her steely demeanor, was as nervous as she could recall before skating in the short program. She said when she took the ice that her legs had no strength, and when she couldn't handle some warm-up jumps, she had to fight the fear of failure from creeping into her mind.

"My legs didn't move and I couldn't do my jumps properly,” Kim said. “When I was on the ice I was trembling. I was very nervous, my legs started shaking. … I tried to believe in myself and believe in my practices."

The nervousness was so uncharacteristic that the South Korean media, which covers Kim relentlessly, was shocked and kept asking how it was possible.

"I am a human being," she said.

She is. It's just that when she skates in the Olympics, it's not always easy to tell.