<p>MOSCOW – After an arduous year that saw Kim Yu-na consider retirement, fire Canadian coach Brian Orser and then pull up stakes and move to the United States, the South Korean skater was back in a familiar spot Friday.</p> <p>The Olympic gold medallist leads after the women’s short program at the world figure skating championships, in her first competitive performance in more than a year.</p> <p>The 20-year-old scored 65.91 points with an elegant and athletic performance to music from the ballet “Giselle.” Her only slip was stepping out of the landing on her opening triple Lutz jump, but her score was still well back of her world record of 78.50 she set at the Vancouver Olympics.</p> <p>Kim admitted her path back to competing hasn’t been all smooth. </p> <p>”It didn’t take too much time to build my stamina, physically, but mentally it was so hard to focus on training, I was asking (myself), why do I have to do this, why? I couldn’t stop thinking those kinds of questions,” Kim said.</p> <p>The South Korean star split with Orser after last year’s world championships in a bitter ending to their longtime partnership, and moved from Toronto to Los Angeles, eventually hiring Peter Oppegard as her coach.</p> <p>”After the Olympics and before making that comeback I wanted to start anew, I wanted to begin skating in a different atmosphere,” Kim said Thursday, when asked about the acrimonious split. “There were was so much advice and recommendations, that’s why I decided to take a new coach and we began working with Peter.” </p> <p>The women’s event was billed as a renewal of the long-time rivalry between Kim and Japan’s Mao Asada, the defending world champion. But the result was anti-climactic as Asada wound up seventh with 58.66 after two-footing her triple Axel and underrotating a triple flip.</p> <p>Japan’s Miki Ando, the 2007 world champion, was second with 65.58 points, while Ksenia Makarova of Russia scored 61.62 to take third.</p> <p>Cynthia Phaneuf of Contrecoeur, Que., who was fifth at the 2010 world championships, finished 13th, losing marks when she doubled a planned triple Lutz. Amelie Lacoste of Delson, Que., was 14th.</p> <p>”The rest was perfect,” the 23-year-old Phaneuf said of her program. “Spins were good, just that little mistake. But it’s a big one, it counts for so many points, it’s kind of the key for the short program.</p> <p>”I’m looking forward to (Saturday), I have two (triple Lutzs) in the long program so I’m looking forward to be landing that for the last skate of the year.”</p> <p>Kim carried South Korea’s hopes on her elegant shoulders into the Vancouver Olympics, where she blew away the field, recording three world records en route to winning gold. She could have retired after the Games, having dominated the discipline for the better part of three seasons, and accumulating plenty of money and fame along the way.</p> <p>”I already achieved all my goals, I won the Olympics and worlds,” Kim said. “But I wanted to show my new programs and new characters in my programs, and show my fans my new performances.”</p> <p>Kim retained longtime Canadian choreographer Brian Wilson after the split with Orser, and Wilson assembled the two new programs she’s unveiling this week.</p> <p>”All my Olympic programs received high scores and I was looking for something even better, something that would be an improvement,” she said.</p> <p>Her long program, called “Homage to Korea,” is set to a collection of Korean music.</p> <p>”Actually we’d been thinking about using Korean music but we thought the time wasn’t right yet. Now I think this is just the time to present Korean music to my Korean fans.”</p>
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