Fourth place. No medal. Usually a catalyst for tears at the Olympics. But to the 16-year-old American, it might be the foundation for some better finishes in the future.

The U.S. women failed to win a medal for just the second time since 1952 at Thursday night's competition. U.S. champion Rachael Flatt finished seventh.

"I'm just happy I was able to be right behind those top competitors because it's my first really big international competition," Nagasu said.

"Most 16-year-olds medal at their first Olympics," she joked. "I'm sorry that I wasn't able to keep up that U.S. trend. But, hopefully, I'll be able to make up for it when I get to come back I hope for the next Olympics."

Flatt was fifth and Nagasu was sixth coming into the finale. The top three skaters needed to make major mistakes for either one to make off with a medal. Nagasu finished more than 12 points out of a bronze.

The 17-year-old Flatt lost points on both her triple flips when she didn't complete the rotation. She said "they felt just fine to me" and acknowledged she was a bit surprised by her score.

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These are the questions looming on Thursday as the women's giant slalom begins: The big unknown here is whether or not Mancuso can partially make up for her 18th place finish on Wednesday after being forced to repeat her first run due to a fall by Lindsey Vonn.

Of course, Mancuso has been drawing criticism thanks to her comments over the weekend about the "popularity contest" between Vonn and other skiers. She seemed to lament, in an interview for Sports Illustrated, that Lindsey Vonn had a big influence over the team. "People are having a hard time reaching their potential because it's such a struggle for attention. You come to meetings after races, and it's like it's a bad day if Lindsey didn't do well."

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The Quebec Gay and Lesbian Council has demanded a public apology from French-language broadcaster RDS after one commentator said Weir hurts figure skating's image and another said Weir should be made to take a gender test. The remarks were "outrageous" and "homophobic," CQGL said in a statement on its Web site.

Weir has repeatedly avoided questions about his sexual orientation in the past, saying it's no one's business and it has no bearing on what he does as an athlete. He is aware of the comments, agent Tara Modlin said Monday.

"The comment is so inappropriate that we will not even justify it with a response," U.S. Olympic Committee CEO Scott Blackmun said.

Australia's Channel Nine has reportedly gotten complaints from viewers after two of its hosts joked about the masculinity of Weir and other male skaters.

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Winter Olympic sports can be divided into three categories: those that go down, those that go up and those that are level. Last night's spread included all three. While Alpine Skiing and Skeleton fall into the first category, Ski Jumping falls into the second and Figure Skating into the third.

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In the meantime, they'd have to settle for the women's super combined: Julia Mancuso looks fantastic on the downhill just as she did on Wednesday, and then manages to nail the slalom, too. Anja Paerson, the Swedish skier who took a horrible fall in the women's downhill, is back today, incredibly enough. But first we have to watch her terrible fall again, gasping as she loses control in the air and then tumbles, bumping her head and getting beaten to a pulp by her own skis and poles and the icy hill beneath her.

Time to fawn over Lindsey Vonn, who not only "dotted the I in Alpine" but who is also "a beguiling mix of fitness, beauty and grit." Can you imagine them referring to Apolo Ohno as "a beguiling mix of fitness, studliness, and grit"? Keep it in your pants, boys.

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But some members of the skating community believe the sport's effeminate image is increasingly a problem. Last year, Skate Canada told athletes and officials to talk up the sport's toughness in order to attract more of a "hockey crowd," and three-time world champion Elvis Stojko, the first man to land a quadruple-triple combination jump in competition (in 1997) and a skater known for his butch style, has spoken out on the issue. The sport really needs to start emphasizing "masculinity, strength and power," Stojko has argued, if it wants to be taken more seriously. His remarks infuriated some gay groups, who perceived them as a slap in the face to the sport's traditional fans.

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Watch the following routine, which world champion ice dancers Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin, from Russia, performed at today's European figure skating championships in Estonia. It's a tribute to Australian Aboriginals, set to Aboriginal-inspired music, with the pair dressed in brown skin-colored body suits covered in tribal markings and fake leaves. Oh, and also a little something that appears to be "brown-face."

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Not in 2002.

2002 was all about the gray areas. It was a year of ties, disputed finishes, moral relativism and endless debate. It was the year of the Tuck Rule and the double figure-skating gold, the speed-skating flap and the disputed Indy 500, the All-Star Game tie and the imminent lifting of Pete Rose's "permanent" ban. A former National League Most Valuable Player said he was on steroids when he won the award, then said he wasn't, which led to baseball promising to get tough on steroids, which it won't. A former NBA player named Bison Dele, né Brian Williams, disappeared mysteriously at sea and is presumed dead.

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None of the skaters in this year's Olympics -- for all the sequins, all the glitter, all the stereotypically gay mannerisms and speech patterns -- is publicly gay. In fact, only one international-level figure skater has ever openly declared himself a gay man -- Rudy Galindo, the 1996 U.S. champion, who came out in USA Today reporter Christine Brennan's book "Inside Edge" weeks before winning his title.

And Galindo says that almost every figure skater he's ever met is straight.

Galindo, 31, who now skates professionally with the "Champions on Ice" tour, has asserted in interviews and his autobiography, "Icebreaker," that coming out hurt his standing with skating judges, as did the fact that he is Mexican-American and that he grew up in a trailer park in San Jose. Galindo now lives in Reno, Nev., to be near his sister, Laura Galindo Black, who is also his skating coach. He spoke with Salon by telephone from her home about gays in skating, the Salt Lake Olympics and the strange world of figure skating judges.

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At least, that seems true in retrospect. But at the conclusion of the free skate, another skating-judge train wreck looked alarmingly possible.

On the day when politically tinged outrage over various judging and official decisions boiled over, with Russian officials threatening to pull their team out of the Games and an enraged South Korea lodging a high-level protest over the short-track decision that took a gold medal from their skater and gave it to popular American Apolo Ohno, that would not have been a good thing.

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All this is beside the point. What we've learned from this debacle is that if enough popular support can be whipped up against an Olympic decision -- and when I say "popular" I mean fed by a television network's reporting of said incident -- then we will have a new decision rendered, one that isn't necessarily fair or even remotely intended to be, but simply one that will make the largest number of people feel good about the scam. Compared to the IOC's decision, Don King-promoted fights are a model of judicial wisdom.

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You couldn't help but feel for them, especially Berezhnaya, with her big Keane eyes and very own made-for-TV story line (like, alarmingly, many Russian figure skaters). Her first pairs partner, who was rumored to have been somewhat abusive to the quiet Berezhnaya, skated too closely to her during side-by-side spins, and the blade of his skate sliced into her skull. She required brain surgery, which left her unable to speak or walk, much less skate.

Enter the equally reticent, but resolute Sikharulidze. He hurried to her hospital bedside and after she recovered, they quickly became figure skating partners, romantic partners and then world champions. Could anyone be more deserving of an Olympic gold medal?

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They've given it a name and a graphic over at MSNBC. It's "The Ice Storm." Scott Hamilton, NBC's figure skating commentator and himself a former gold medalist, hasn't slept yet, so full of turmoil has he been over the events of Monday night.

Christine Brennan of USA Today wrote that Monday's decision was the worst she'd seen in 14 years covering figure skating and, calling for a full investigation, all but said that the judging was rigged. The International Skating Union, the sport's governing body, said it would launch an "internal assessment" of the judging, whatever that means.

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The refined comic stylings of Benny Hill are remembered on Biography (8 p.m. Fri., A&E). The reality series Popstars (8:30 p.m. Fri., WB) really is the girl version of "Making the Band"; last week's audition episode was practically identical to the "Making the Band" pilot, with clips of wannabes imitating Christina Aguilera and Mariah Carey in hopes of winning a slot. Except "Popstars" was even nastier, showing a long snarky segment on the most pathetically talentless of the lot. Grade A cheese. Mad TV (11 p.m. Sat., Fox) has a presidential inauguration special, if you feel like laughing about it. On King of the Hill (7:30 p.m. Sun., Fox), Hank's beloved truck may be headed for the scrapheap. Malcolm's family gets into a feud with the new neighbors on Malcolm in the Middle (8:30 p.m. Sun., Fox). Scully and Doggett battle a murder suspect who's so, um, flexible he puts old bogeyman Tooms to shame on The X-Files (9 p.m. Sun., Fox). Nikita suffers from mysterious blackouts, much like California, on La Femme Nikita (10 p.m. Sun., USA).

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Funding for Dr. Morris' project -- Michael -- may not be renewed on Now and Again (9 p.m. Fri., CBS). Julianna Margulies hosts Saturday Night Live (11:30 p.m. Sat., NBC). King of the Hill (7:30 p.m. Sun., Fox) concludes its two-parter with Hank under suspicion for murder, and a recurring character bites the dust on The Simpsons (8 p.m. Sun., Fox). Hint: The episode is called "Alone Again, Natura-diddl-ly." Noel and Ruby await the results of a pregnancy test on Felicity (8 p.m. Sun., WB). On the conclusion of a two-part episode of The X-Files (9 p.m. Sun., Fox), Mulder finally learns the truth about his sister's disappearance. No lie. A central mystery will be solved. Or so says Chris Carter. Melfi's shrink helps her unravel her feelings for Tony on The Sopranos (9 p.m. Sun., HBO). Helen and Bobby clash (what else is new) over a murder case involving a detective's son on The Practice (10 p.m. Sun., ABC).

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Christ, I wouldn't even talk to the desperately lonely middle-aged expatriate lady, some woman in a filthy pink coat who'd married a Tokyo businessman years ago and spoke at me in English all quickly and greedily like she was trying to score sex or crack off me. She kept following me around the train station and inviting me to take a public bath with her and inviting herself to look me up when she got to New York.

"Oh, we'll have LOTS to talk about on the train. I'll have to tell you all about my accident, in detail. I haven't told many people about it, but I'm sure that YOU'LL understand," she said, grasping my arm.

"Sit here," I said, when I found an open seat on the full train.

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