She didn’t want to go to practice and she didn’t want to work—even with the World Figure Skating Championships in Turin, Italy, just a few weeks away.

Yet she didn’t get a hard time for that.

“I’ve been there. After Calgary, I had to go through the same thing,” said Brian Orser, Kim’s coach and the Olympic silver medalist in 1984 and ’88. “Whether you win or lose, it’s hard. You’ve won the biggest prize. And then, if you haven’t won, you’re defeated and you have the `why bother’ attitude.

“All the athletes have that,” he added. “And I told Yu-na that: `You’re not special.”’

Orser says this with a chuckle, of course. But the world championships after an Olympics are always a tough assignment for the best skaters.

The Olympics are the pinnacle, and skaters devote their entire lives to those two weeks. They’re exhausted and drained when the games finish, and the last thing most want to do is get right back on the ice and resume training. With the world championships beginning less than a month after the games end, it’s often a bigger surprise when the top names do show up.

The Vancouver Games weren’t even over before men’s champion Evan Lysacek announced he wouldn’t be defending his world title. Evgeni Plushenko, the silver medalist in Vancouver and a three-time world champ, isn’t going, either. Women’s bronze medalist Joannie Rochette is taking a much-needed break after her mother’s sudden death.

Pairs champions Shen Xue and Zhao Hongbao are skipping worlds, as are Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin, the bronze medalists in ice dance and reigning world champions. Tanith Belbin and Ben Agosto, who finished second to the Russians at last year’s worlds, are taking a pass, too.

Organizers in Turin, which hosted the 2006 Olympics, were disappointed that so many of the sport’s top athletes were skipping what in other years is skating’s premiere event.

“Of course our goal at the beginning was to have all the medal winners present,” said Paolo Bellino, general director of Torino Olympic Park, which runs the former Olympic venues. “But we have a lot of champions here in Turin.”

Organizers point out that more than 75 percent of tickets for all of the events—many of which will be held during work and school hours—have been sold out. But what may be hurt more by the absense of some of skating’s stars is television viewership, which translates into revenues for the International Skating Union as well as secures fan loyalty.

“If you don’t have top skaters, you have fewer viewers,” Bellino said.

The worlds begin Tuesday with the compulsories in ice dance.

“It’s really hard,” Orser said. “(Kim) didn’t realize it would be that hard. I told her just take the time. You’ll know when you’re ready. You’ll know when it’s time and you’ll be fine. And she’s fine now. She’s been doing clean longs and clean shorts and getting in that competitive mindset.”

Which is bad news for the rest of the women.

Kim has lost just once in the last two seasons, and her performance in Vancouver was so dominant and so memorable that some have said it was the best in history. Considering Peggy Fleming, Dorothy Hamill and Katarina Witt are all Olympic champions, that’s saying something.

Mao Asada will likely do three triple axels—one in the short, two in the long. But as Kim showed in Vancouver, when she’s on, she’s unstoppable.

“I can’t imagine any other placement than winning because of the condition she’s in,” Orser said. “She knows how to turn it on and turn it up. Right now we’re at a medium simmer. But we’re going to turn up the heat. I just know that when we get to Turin and get to that space, she’ll turn it up.”

For the men, it will be a much bigger battle.

Daisuke Takahashi is the only Vancouver medalist going to Turin. But he still has to contend with Patrick Chan, who won the silver medal at last year’s worlds and feels like he has something to prove after finishing fifth in Vancouver; Japanese teammates Nobunari Oda and Takahiko Kozuka; two-time US champion Jeremy Abbott; and 2007 world champ Brian Joubert, who certainly doesn’t want his disastrous showing in Vancouver to be the lingering memory from this year.

“Definitely the gold medal, for sure. After winning the silver last year, there’s no reason why I shouldn’t be striving for the gold medal,” Chan said. “I definitely see this as a continuation for next season, showing everyone that my time is going to come. It didn’t happen in Vancouver, but it’s sure going to come in the next four years.”

Pairs silver medalists Pang Qing and Tong Jian are hoping to add another world title to the one they claimed in 2006—the last post-Olympic world championships. Their biggest competition should come from two-time defending world champions Aliona Savchenko and Robin Szolkowy of Germany, who were third in Vancouver.