LAKE PLACID, N.Y. — There are two ways to look at Yuna Kim's performance in Sunday's free skate final at Skate America.
One is that despite her intimations of skating immortality, Kim remains vulnerable to the ills the psyche is heir to -- notably pressure -- which should encourage her rivals three months before the Winter Olympics.
The other is that despite her worst free skate score since her debut on the senior Grand Prix circuit four seasons ago, Kim still won the competition by more than 13 points over Rachael Flatt, who took the free skate.
And the South Korean's total score at Skate America, 187.98, still is 11 points better than anyone else's this year. To her rivals' discouragement, that means Kim seems unbeatable even far from her best, which is 210.03 at the Paris Grand Prix event last month.
Flatt, who wound up with 174.91 and cemented her position as the leading U.S. woman, takes a balanced, realistic view of the situation.
"It's really hard to match her (Kim's) quality because she has set an incredibly high standard," Flatt said. "And she has shown that she does falter on occasion."
Kim's free skate started badly, with both jumps of her combination shaky, and she never completely recovered. She fell on the next jump, a triple flip, then butchered the execution of a later triple lutz so badly it was called a single with a maximum negative grade of execution.
The judges credited Kim with just three clean triple jumps. Her free skate score was 111.70 to Flatt's 116.11. Kim's previous low in a senior international competition was 105.80 at 2006 Skate Canada.
Kim's world record score in Friday's short program was both the reason she won Skate America and the albatross she carried into the free skate.
"Everyone wants her to skate perfectly, and it's not easy," said third-place finisher Julia Sebestyen of Hungary.
The 19-year-old Kim is one of South Korea's biggest sports stars. The huge number of Korean flags waved in the Skate America crowd attests to the enormous appeal she has among her compatriots.
South Korean media put great emphasis on the scores Kim gets in every competition. It has become a continuous game of "Can she top this?" and Kim freely admits the pressure that brings.
"I'm sure it's incredibly hard to live up to that expectation," Flatt said.