A Triumph on Thin Ice

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Was the nightmare real? Last Thursday evening, Japan was facing a shutout in Torino—zero medals, compared to China's nine and South Korea's eight—after predicting at least a five-medal harvest. It was shaping up to be the country's worst Winter Olympics since 1976's Innsbruck Games. Heavily hyped athletes like speedskater Joji Kato and snowboarder Kazuhiro Kokubo had fizzled early, forcing the Japanese Olympic Committee (JOC) to field dozens of calls each day from irate Japanese decrying the nation's disgraceful performance. "We tell the callers that we will reflect on the results and that we must refocus on our improvement plans for the [2010] Vancouver Olympics," explained Yuko Iwakami of the JOC's general-affairs department.

By day 13 in Torino, the only athlete left to salvage Japan's underwhelming performance was 24-year-old women's figure skater Shizuka Arakawa, clinging to third place going into the long-program event. Arakawa may have been the 2004 world champion, but all week the who-will-get-gold headlines belonged to the frontrunners, America's Sasha Cohen and Russia's Irina Slutskaya. "[Arakawa] is among the top-three girls," her coach Nikolai Morozov told TIME in the run-up to Torino. "She now has to work on building more confidence in herself."

But with each successive day without medals, Japanese newspapers were showing little confidence in the nation's winter athletes. Articles on Arakawa's medal chase battled for prime space in the sports pages with stories on baseball spring training. None of that, however, seemed to bother Arakawa during her free skate. After Cohen's spill-filled routine dashed the American's hopes for gold, the elegant Japanese scored five clean triples and a signature back-bend to notch a personal-best score of 125.32 in the long program. Slutskaya, who skated last, was no match and came in third behind Cohen. "One gold is worth 10 bronzes," a jubilant Kenichi Chizuka, head of Japan's Olympic delegation, told reporters in Torino. The national nightmare had finally ended.