Mike Celizic

TURIN, Italy - This is not the way it should end, not for as great a champion as Michelle Kwan.

Once she was given an exemption from the National Championships and put on the Olympic team, the only way you wanted to see Kwan end her career was on the ice, pursuing that elusive Olympic gold medal, the only prize that has eluded her in one of the more brilliant careers her sport has seen.

Kwan dropped out of the Turin Olympics Sunday morning, one day after she cut short a practice because of her recurring groin injury. Shortly after, the U.S. Olympic Committee submitted a request to replace Kwan with Emily Hughes, the third-place finisher at last month’s nationals. An answer is expected later this week, and Hughes was expected to travel to Turin on Sunday.

She probably wasn’t going to win, but you wanted to see her try. You wanted to root for her, too, because if others fell and she reached deep and found one last bit of magic, you could see that victory was possible. And if that happened, if she skated off into the sunset with her gold medal, they could just shut the Games down at that moment, because nothing could equal such a story.

But now, she won’t even have a chance to try. The same groin injury that kept her out of the National Championships plagued her in Saturday’s first practice session for women’s singles figure skating. She landed one triple jump, two-footed the landing on another, crashed on a third and doubled out on a fourth. With 15 minutes left in the session, she skated off the ice.

WINTER OLYMPICS More on Michelle Kwan Injury forces skater to withdraw Readers voice strong support for Kwan Spotlight now on Cohen, Hughes Bondy: Kwan never great Olympian Opinion: Missed golds define career Commentary: This was Black Sunday WP: Now Kwan has time to find true self   Video: Kwan talks with Costas about decision   Video: Kwan says she has 'no regrets' Vote: Kwan's mistake? | Legacy? | Highlights MORE FIGURE SKATING COVERAGE

Afterwards, she blamed the plane ride over and marching in the Opening Ceremonies for  aggravating her injury. Maybe that’s true, but it doesn’t sound convincing. The ceremonies are very low impact and she didn’t fly coach.

More likely, the injury never healed fully. More likely, the strain of skating a special program for the U.S. Figure Skating Association to get on the team and practicing for the Olympics continued to put strain on the injury.

She came to Turin in a tough place. She needed to practice, but practice damaged her further.

You know she wanted this desperately. But you also know she has too much pride and too much respect for her sport to try to skate injured and embarrass herself in front of the world.

Slide show   Pictures of the Day Check out Sunday's best Olympic images.

I didn’t think she should have been given an exemption from the nationals and been put on the team. That wasn’t because I don’t like Kwan, but because I don’t believe in exemptions from the normal qualifying procedures except in extraordinary circumstances. Nancy Kerrigan taking a tire iron to the shin was an extraordinary circumstance. A pulled groin was not. That’s how I saw it.

The federation saw it differently, and once she was on the team, I also said how she got here no longer mattered. She was coming to Turin, chasing her dream, the same dream that all athletes pursue as long as they can. I wanted to see her do it.

And I can certainly see why the U.S. Figure Skating Federation wanted her here. She’s a nine-time national champion, five-time world champion and two-time Olympian. Eight years ago, she missed a gold medal because Tara Lipinski skated the program of her life. Four years ago, she crashed and stumbled and finally watched as Sarah Hughes walked away with gold.

Slide show   Emotional Moments Feb. 26: See photos of athletes' highs and lows from Sunday.

Kwan is the face of American skating, charming, personable, charismatic and dignified. American skating officials felt they owed her one for all she’d done for them. They decided to give her a spot on the team. It was their right.

The return for the federation was all the publicity and attention and television ratings Kwan brought with her. Even before she arrived in Torino, she was America’s Olympic cover girl, the biggest story in winter sports’ biggest showcase.

Not many inside the sport seriously felt she could win. At 25, she’s old for her sport, not as old as gold-medal favorite Irina Slutskaya, who is 27, but still old. Thousands upon thousands of jumps and spins and falls on rock-hard ice during countless hours of practice take a brutal toll on a skater’s body. Knees get creaky, hips get cranky, muscles get worn and tired. The grace and beauty of a skating program doesn’t come without a price.

But not being expected to win can be liberating. Without pressure, she may have skated well and cleanly. Slutskaya, too, has been denied gold medals she wanted desperately, and, at 27, the pressure is on her in what she knows is her last chance. We don’t know how she will respond.

Slide show   Ice kings and queens See the skaters with the best shot at winning the gold in Turin.

Slips and falls are almost the rule in the Olympics, at least in the singles events. The athletes are pushing their limits to do extraordinarily difficult tricks under the fiercest pressure they will ever face. Cleanly skated programs are the exception, not the rule.

Kwan knows that as well as anyone, and she knew that if she could skate cleanly, anything was possible. A long shot is better than no shot. You wanted to at least see the show.

But now she will never take the ice, she will never give us that one final drama in the Winter Games’ most glamorous event.

We knew that one way or another it would end for Kwan in Turin. It just shouldn’t have ended this way.

MORE FROM FIGURE SKATING

Figure skating Section Front

Cohen to skate in '10 ... if body permits Bumpy ride ahead for U.S. figure skating Vote: Who will win skating gold in 2010? Celizic: America's top 10 Olympic busts Cohen will skate in world championships Celizic: U.S. did itself proud at Olympics Figure skating medal winners, results   Slide show: Fashionable skating costumes Interactive: Figuring out figure skating Figure skating Section Front   Add Figure skating headlines to your news reader: