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The best news to come out of the U.S. championships this year was the extreme depth of the senior ladies field, particularly compared to last year. For example, Sara Wheat landed more clean triple jumps in her long program to finish 10th this year than did Naomi Nari Nam in finishing second at last year's championships. Another point of comparison is that, last year, only five ladies landed a triple lutz -- the most difficult of the triple jumps commonly performed by women -- in their free programs, while this year, triple lutzes were landed by no less than 10 competitors in the free skate.

Right now, the U.S. obviously has plenty of talent in the ladies' division. What's more, the very competitiveness of the field at the national level is bound to drive up the technical standards even further in the next couple of years as the skaters all try to top one another and earn a spot on the 2002 Olympic team.

Another encouraging development, in a twisted sort of way, came from Naomi Nari Nam. Although her meltdown in the free skate, which dropped her to an eighth-place finish and off the World Junior team, was certainly disappointing in the short term, in the longer term it might turn out to be a good thing because it relieves her of the unrealistic expectations she was forced to carry after her surprise runner-up finish last year. Not only that, what happened to Nam also seems to be making fans and the media more reluctant to burden this year's phenom, Sasha Cohen, with the same kind of excessive hype.

And, as far as Nam personally is concerned, her skating has actually improved considerably since last year. Her jumps are probably not any more inconsistent than they were a year ago, and in the meantime she has added tremendous speed and power to her skating -- more so than any other competitor in the event. And, since she's still only 14, it's far too early to write her off as a competitor yet.

The men's field this year was a different story altogether, with disappointing performances from quite a number of skaters. But there was still good news of a different sort, when the judges chose to reward the better all-around skating of Michael Weiss instead of Tim Goebel, whose program was packed with quadruple jumps and little else. It's encouraging to see that the judges remember that figure skating is still about skating and not just jumping.

It must be disheartening to Goebel to land three quads in one program and still come up short against a less-than-perfect performance from Weiss. But, in a sense, Goebel got exactly what he asked for. All week long during practices, he didn't do practice run-throughs of his programs and he didn't work on his non-jump elements or choreography. Instead, it was just quads, quads and more quads as he frittered away his time showing off in front of a highly partisan hometown audience, which had been fed a constant stream of quad propaganda by the local news media.

Goebel probably would have won gold instead of silver if even a quarter of the time he spent obsessing over quadruple jumps had instead been spent on paying attention to just standing up straight and not slouching like a gorilla as he lumbered around the rink in between jumps. While Goebel's presentation is not as entirely execrable as last year -- thanks, in large part, to having much better choreography to work with -- this aspect of his skating still needs massive amounts of work, and at this competition the judges rightly penalized him for it.

Surprising runner-up Sasha Cohen, 15, now must face the pressure of increased expectations.(AP)

And, encouragingly, Goebel seems to have gotten the message this year that he didn't get last year.

"I've really made great strides in improving my artistry, but I've got a way to go," he said in a post-competition press conference. "I need time. I'm younger than the other medalists here and I'm just going to take the next few years and really develop my artistry."

For Michael Weiss, too, there's a message: He ought to be worried about his jump content if he wants to get anywhere near the podium at the upcoming World Championships. Both in the short program and in the long, he not only pared an intended quadruple jump down to a triple, but he also came perilously close to disaster on his triple axels, a jump that appeared to be giving him major problems throughout the week. (In one practice, Weiss took such a huge splat on a triple axel attempt that he had to get four stitches in his chin to repair the damage.) In a deeper field, such as he'll face at Worlds, a problem with either jump in the short program would be enough to drop him completely out of medal contention.

Weiss also has another problem he has to overcome that has nothing to do with skating: The hype from his team has reached such an obnoxious and inappropriate level that it is clearly beginning to alienate the public.

For example, members of Weiss' sizable family contingent were seen going around the arena handing out "Go Mike!" signs during intermissions, leading more than one fan to wonder if his supporters thought the competition was a popularity contest instead of a sporting event. Similarly, his sizable family contingent made so much noise cheering for his popped quad attempts that some fans skeptically wondered if they were trying to convince the judges into thinking that he'd landed the jumps successfully after all.

But worst of all has been the way Weiss has gone over the limits of both good taste and good sense in trying to portray himself to the public as Mr. Macho Straight Family Man Skater by taking every opportunity to boast about his children or parade them around in public or on camera. At the medal ceremony held late Saturday night, there was a distinctly audible groan of dismay from spectators when Weiss picked up his 3-month-old son Christopher to carry like a trophy on his victory lap around the rink.

Michael Weiss is a proud family man, but he might have carried things too far by bringing an unhealthy Christopher to watch.(AP)

The people in the arena most likely knew nothing about it at the time, but an article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer the next morning reported that the child had been sick all week with a "terrible, barking cough" and had been diagnosed with chicken pox earlier in the day. Did Weiss take complete leave of his senses to be bringing an infant who was seriously ill with an infectious disease to a public event, all for the sake of a staged publicity stunt?

Perhaps all new parents are inclined to think that their children are objects of intense fascination to the world at large, but it's time Weiss got the message: Most fans don't give a flying fig about his family life, and it's time to just shut up and skate, like the fine skater he really is.