PHILADELPHIA -- Four years ago, a figure skater with the first name of Tonya stood behind a saga that embodied everything that could be wrong about the sport, taking envy and ambition to horrifying levels.

Four

Kwiatkowski's Olympic dreams faded for good Saturday night. (AP)

years later, another figure skater with an identical-sounding first name embodied everything that can be right, not just about her craft but about living a solid life. Tonia Kwiatkowski spells her first name differently than Tonya Harding. She also lives her life with a class and eloquence that should speak volumes to a sport that continues to have its share of crazy characters and prima donnas.

What Kwiatkowski could not do Saturday night was skate with the same grace in which she's held herself at 12 prior U.S. Figure Skating Association national trials.

THIS HAS NOT BEEN A FORTUNATE week for her. It was one thing to joke about the fact Campbell's Soup, with its headquarters just across the Delaware River in Camden, N.J., had snubbed her by placing Michelle Kwan, Tara Lipinski and Nicole Bobek on its new soup labels as a salute to great American skaters.

It was as if Campbell's were projecting America's three ladies Olympic skaters. In the beginning, it looked as if that speculation might have a hole. Kwiatkowski had finished the short program two days ago in third place, ahead of Lipinski, of all people.

Everyone knew Saturday's long program was really an issue between Bobek and Kwiatkowski. Kwan was exceptional on Thursday, scoring seven perfect 6.0 scores. Saturday, she recorded the most 6.0's in a long in the history of the U.S. trials -- for a man or a woman. By sheer luck of the draw among the top six skaters, Kwiatkowski had to skate last. She fell twice.

HER PERFORMANCE MADE IT EASY for the USFSA to dub Kwan, Lipinski and Bobek the American team for the Olympics in Nagano, Japan. There was no issue, no controversy. Just the end to an unusual career for a 26-year-old American with a lot of class and no Olympic games appearance on her resume.

"Tonia either tried too hard or wanted it too badly," said her coach, Carol Heiss Jenkins, herself a former Olympian. "She didn't rely on her good training. She didn't let her body go. That's what the other three girls on the team do well. They let their body flow."

One didn't have to strain to see the pain in Kwiatkowski's face. She had to do the impossible. She had to follow two solid performances by Lipinski and Bobek and an all-timer from Kwan. She had to do this at a time some have dismissed her as a "rickety" old veteran, an insult Kwiatkowski dismissed this week with characteristic style.

About 40 minutes after it was all over late Saturday night, Kwiatkowski was in the basement of the CoreStates Center, sitting at a table near an ambulance, smiling at reporters while tears streamed down her face.

At 26,

Is Bobek, at 20, on her last leg too? (AP)

with two college degrees under her belt, after a career in which she's skated for the sheer love of the sport ... after all of that, she's entitled to the indulgence.

"I just kept saying tonight, 'Come on, get into it.' It just didn't work out," she said.

THAT HAD NOTHING to do with Kwan.

"She's a beautiful skater. She had 6.0s in the short program, too ... You don't really pay much attention to what other people are doing out there," Kwiatkowski said.

Her fellow skaters said some private words to her, offered support. And that was it.

"I congratulated all of them and wished them the best of luck," she said.

Kwiatkowski is the daughter of a truck driver, an unpretentious young woman from Ohio who is arguably the most well-rounded high-profile American ladies skater in the business.

Lipinski, who is 15, said after her program that "over the years" she's developed enough of a mental toughness to come back from disappointment. That's all well and good. But she has a bit more of the world to see.

The tears Lipinski offered after her brief setback on Thursday were ones of temporary disbelief that her path could be anything but golden. The tears Kwiatkowski offered late Saturday night were the genuine emotions of someone who's given her life to a sport, made the sport better for it.

For all the right reasons.