A lift in her routine // Naomi Nari Nam, once hobbled by injuries, competes again ? this time with a partner.

SPOKANE, Wash. Naomi Nari Nam is feeling her age this week.

“All the people at nationals are getting younger and younger,” said Nam, who is skating at the 2007 U.S. Figure Skating Championships pairs competition with Themi Leftheris. “I’m an oldie.”

Little Naomi Nari Nam, once the darling of American figure skating, is 21 now, older still in skating years.

“She’s really been through a lot,” Leftheris said.

After years of battling injuries that at one point left her unable to walk and for a time drove her from the sport, Nam finally has a world championship berth within reach.

“I think I appreciate (skating) so much more,” a teary-eyed Nam said, her voice choked with emotion. “To be able to come back.”

The Irvine native was just 13 when she stunned international skating by nearly upsetting world champion Michelle Kwan at the 1999 U.S. championships.

At 15 she was being written off by many in the sport world as a bust. By 16 she was crippled by a series of hip injuries. By 18 she was a poster child for a sport that too often pushes its young stars too hard, too fast. A year later she was out of the sport.

“That was a long time ago,” she said. “In between that time and now I’m a completely different person.”

Nam returned to the sport at 20 as a pairs skater. She and Leftheris start tonight’s long program trailing reigning U.S. champions Rena Inoue and John Baldwin Jr. by the slimmest of margins – 62.73 to 62.29 – having already virtually locked up one of the three U.S. spots for the 2007 world championships.

“The pressure is definitely there,” Nam said. “A lot of people are expecting a lot of things from us.”

The sport has had golden expectations for Nam since she stole the show and America’s heart at the 1999 U.S. championships in Salt Lake City. Many who left the Delta Center that night couldn’t help thinking the results between Kwan and Nam might be reversed when they returned to Utah for the 2002 Olympic Games.

Instead it was Nam’s longtime training partner, Sasha Cohen, who emerged as Kwan’s primary rival, while Nam struggled with injuries. She developed tendinitis in her right hip flexor but continued pounding out jumps, determined to keep pace with Kwan and Cohen. “She ignored a lot of red flags,” Leftheris said.

In the summer of 2001 Nam could not ignore the loud pop in her hip during a training session. She had a stress fracture and an inflamed growth plate. At one point during her rehabilitation a therapist lightly placed a finger on the hip and asked Nam to raise her leg. She couldn’t.

She tried several comebacks. “I can tolerate a lot of pain,” Nam said. But she couldn’t handle not being in Salt Lake City. She didn’t watch the Olympic ladies skating competition live on television. It would be months before Nam could bring herself to watch a tape of another American teenager, Sarah Hughes, upsetting Kwan.

“It was hard for me,” Nam said. “I really wanted to be there.”

She had surgery to repair her hip in 2004 and drifted away from the sport.

“I did not want anyone to know I was a figure skater,” Nam said. “I was trying to find myself. I was looking for a new start, a new beginning. It was so frustrating. Very heartbreaking. I just wanted to forget about skating.”

She graduated from Woodbridge High School, went to parties, got a boyfriend, took a job at Coffee Bean. “I make great foam,” Nam said. For a while she worked in retail.

“I lived a normal girl life,” she recalled. “It just wasn’t as exciting as skating. I would think, ‘Gosh, this is so boring.’ Something was missing. I had unfinished business.”

In the summer she decided to return to the sport as a pairs skater. While the move caught many by surprise, Nam said: “I was more surprised with myself that I wanted to come back to skating. It was definitely a difficult decision.”

She had a tryout with Baldwin’s younger brother Don before hooking up with Leftheris, who had just broken up with his previous partner.

“We really did click right away,” said Leftheris, a thoughtful, soft-spoken 24-year-old who is involved with Pathways Mentoring Program, which helps children with incarcerated parents. “Actually it sounds kind of cliché, but it really was that easy. The timing was so natural.”

Even so, no one expected the pair to be a factor at the 2006 U.S. championships in St. Louis, an event that selected the U.S. team for the Turin Olympics.

“We didn’t know what to expect,” Leftheris said.

Yet Nam and Leftheris provided the feel-good moment of the competition, placing third in the short program, finishing their routine to a standing ovation that acknowledged Nam’s long road back.

“That was just for Naomi,” Leftheris said. “It was really a moment for her.”

“I can’t really explain it,” Nam said, recalling her emotions that night. “It was like: ‘OK, I’m back. I’m finally here.’ I definitely realized I was meant to skate.”

Nam and Leftheris slipped to fifth place overall, a finish that pleased both of them given their short preparation. But being back on the ice was no longer enough for Nam.

St. Louis was “not a sigh of relief,” she said. “More of a kick in the butt.”

Continuing to train under Peter Oppegard, winner of a bronze pairs medal with Jill Watson at the 1988 Olympic Games, Nam and Leftheris delivered another surprise with a third-place finish against a top-flight field at fall’s Skate America, an International Skating Union Grand Prix event.

“That was a big confidence boost,” Leftheris said.

With Baldwin 33 and Inoue 30, more skating insiders see Nam and Leftheris as the best U.S. hope for the 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver, British Columbia. An American pair hasn’t medaled at the Olympics since Oppegard and Watson, and only one U.S. team in the past 10 years has placed in the top three at the world championships.

“My dream is to win a pairs medal for the U.S.,” Nam said. “That would be a big accomplishment, but we’re definitely capable of it.”

After years of skating in obscurity, Leftheris copes with the heightened expectations by losing himself in coloring books at competitions, a habit he began as a young skater.

“Harry Potter, Bugs Bunny, Looney Tunes,” he said listing his collection. “It calms me down.”

Nam, on the other hand, seems to thrive in the glare of the spotlight.

“I definitely missed it,” she said. “I missed the pressure. I missed the excitement.”

For a moment, despite her protests of old age, she is 21 going on 13 again. The hole in her hip has healed, as has the one in her heart. She has covered a long, hard road back only to view it not as a destination but as a starting point.

“I came back to skate at the top level,” she said. “I still have dreams.”

short program: Spectators booed what they considered low scores Wednesday for Naomi Nari Nam and Themi Leftheris.