Somewhere between winning a silver medal at the world figure skating championships last March and the Grand Prix Final last weekend, Canadian champion Joannie Rochette misplaced her confidence.

It showed on Saturday when the 23-year-old from Ile-Dupas. Que., finished fifth in the women's event, just edging young Russian Elena Leonova by .16 points for last place.

Kim Yu-Na of South Korea won the gold medal with only 188.86 points, underscoring the impact of the Olympic jitters on everyone with just 66 days to go (as of Mon. Dec. 7) to the Vancouver Olympics.

Kim holds the women's world record for a total score of 210.03, set at her first Grand Prix in Paris this season. Her score on Saturday was more than 21 points off her best mark.

In all disciplines, few skaters found a way to shine, perhaps burdened by Olympic dreams and pressures. The exceptions were:

-- Unheralded Japanese skater Akiko Suzuki who landed seven clean triples to finish third in the women's free skate, and third overall, ahead of Rochette;

-- Three-time world pair champions Shen Xue and Zhao Hongbo of China who set a world record for a total score of 214.25 in their discipline to win gold. They blasted the previous mark of 206.71 points set by reigning world champions Aliona Savchenko and Robin Szolkowy of Germany at Skate Canada two weeks ago. Savchenko and Szolkowy finished only fourth in the free skate Saturday and third overall;

-- Pang Qing and Tong Jian of China, the underrated Chinese pair team that took the silver medal with 201.86, a score good enough to have placed them second at the Turin Olympics;

-- Reigning world champion Evan Lysacek of the United States who won the men's event with a consistent performance and a career best score of 249.45, high enough to have placed him second behind Evgeni Plushenko of Russia at the 2006 Olympics;

-- Jeremy Abbott, the defending Grand Prix Final champion, who stumbled about in the short program but soared in the free skate in which he finished second, missing only his quad. Even so, he had a higher technical mark than Lysacek. It'll be an interesting U.S. championships next month.

But Rochette and many others were not among that group.
"Now we're getting within two months of the games,'' said Michael Slipchuk, director of high performance for the Skate Canada association. "You're getting within reality. It's starting to get closer. This is just part of the process with all of these skaters. Youjust have to go through it. We can let them hear from skaters that have been through it before, but you've got to go through the process yourself. Sometimes when you have these off days, it makes you stronger.''

Rochette admitted she was nervous going into the short program, in which she finished only fourth, but she felt relaxed when she started her long program on Saturday. She's not quite sure what went wrong. Perhaps she didn't get enough training time because she competed only two weeks ago at Skate Canada, she said.

"I would like to be able to attribute it to something and know exactly what went wrong, and tell you it's either jet lag or nerves, but honestly, it's not that,'' she said from Tokyo.

She and coach Manon Perron have some ideas of what may have gone wrong, but they have not analyzed everything yet, Rochette said. That will wait until they get back to Canada, as Rochette seeks to purge her emotions of sadness and disappointment.

"I know the key is for me to do a lot of runthroughs, and a lot of repetitions [in training] so that when I get to competition, I have confidence,'' she said. "Clearly what's missing is confidence this year, compared to last season.

"I think I need to find this back, but there's no magic recipe for that unfortunately.The Olympics are coming very soon and that's a good reason to feel motivated, but I just need to find that confidence back.''

Rochette was in trouble from her opening jump, doubling what was to be a triple Lutz combination. She stepped out of a triple flip, singled a triple loop, doubled another Lutz, and stumbled out of a triple Salchow on which she didn't complete the rotation. The only triples she landed were part of her triple toe loop - triple Salchow sequence.

She looked close to tears when she stepped off the ice. Perron glanced at her several times, as the marks came up, but Rochette would not, could not look at her.

Rochette says she has confidence in her long program to Samson and Delilah and just needs good training. She can turn things around quickly, she said. She won the Japan Open with the free skate after practicing it for only two or three weeks.

"I came here with goal to be on the podium and I didn't achieve it,'' she said. "I can live with the disappointment. I'm so proud to know that I belong with the best in the world, but I just need to make it happen in my training first of all, then it will happen in competition.''