South Korea seeks historic figure skate medal from Kim (News Feature)

By Hannah Bae Feb 21, 2010, 18:50 GMT

Seoul - The pressure is on for Kim Yu-Na, largely considered the strong favourite for Olympic gold in women's figure skating.

'My condition is good,' Kim said on her arrival in Vancouver on Friday ahead of Tuesday's short programme.

'Although I arrived in Vancouver late, I have been training all along.'

Lest the attention interfere with her victory, the defending world has kept a low profile since December 18, her last contact with the media as mandated by coach Brian Orser.

To combat the stress of Olympic competition, the teenage athlete will stick to a confidential, atypical itinerary while in Vancouver.

Rather than stay in the Olympic Village, Kim will remain protectively cocooned in a Vancouver hotel, whose name and location remain a tightly kept secret.

'She expressed discomfort in a recent competition about all the attention the Korean public gives her,' Bang Sang-Ah, a TV commentator and former national figure skating coach, told German Press Agency dpa.

'So for the Olympics, people will try to display less pressure.'

Kim's agency, IB Sports, echoed that sentiment.

'We don't care whether she wins or not,' Moon Dae-Hoon, a representative from the agency's marketing division, said after raving about Kim's chance of gold. 'Most people love her anyway.'

After all, the whole country's hopes for its first figure skating gold rest on Kim's performance. The feat is especially significant due to Korea's fierce rivalry with Japan, whose Shizuka Arakawa brought home gold in the 2006 Turin Winter Games.

'Because of competitive relations between Japan and Korea, the Korean public didn't feel very good about Japan's win, but they couldn't do anything about it since we didn't have skilled skaters,' Bang explained, referring to residual tensions from Japan's colonial occupation of Korea from 1910 to 1945.

Kim's fiercest competition will be Japanese rivals Mao Asada and Miki Ando.

The South Korean, though, has been able to thrive under the spotlight, according to her choreographer David Wilson.

'More than any skater, she's been affected by how her home country has treated her,' Wilson, 43, said by phone last month from Toronto, Canada, where Kim lives and trains.

'This has been a huge factor in her becoming a performer on ice. It's brought her more out of her shell,' he said, noting her progress since he began working with her in 2006.

'The kind of attention Korea has given her can be compared to how the US treated Dorothy Hamill and Michelle Kwan. The exposure has been amazing for her.'

As for these Games, the world will know its winner after the free skate on Thursday.