91Èȱ¬

Hello again - GB's Stacey Kemp and David King will be back on the world stage

Figure skating has a huge profile at the Winter Olympics. It is instantly recognisable, watched by hundreds of millions around the globe, makes of its Olympic winners and is, if anything, becoming more popular with the advent of on both sides of the pond.

So a World Championships less than one month after the Olympic Games should be the perfect way to prolong the buzz, yes? Take all the Olympic stars and give them another outing at the highest level - second chances for the wronged, a challenge for the victorious to do it again, and an extra bite at the cherry for millions of fans lapping up every Lutz.

Except it doesn't work that way. Some of the finest figure skaters from Vancouver 2010 are nowhere to be found in Italy - yes, their lives go on after the Olympics, but not in a sporting sense. They have other commitments. In almost any Olympic sport (I'm thinking of tennis and football as exceptions), you don't miss the Games. World Championships a month later, though? Expendable.

is a prime example. The men's Olympic champion announced his withdrawal from the World Championships before the Games had even finished, and turned up on television in his home country, the United States, alongside astronaut of all people at the start of a new series of . (Something only Aldrin, of the contestants, has achieved in any meaningful sense.)

In Lysacek's absence you might expect the Olympic silver medallist to have their eye on world gold, but no. That man is , the outspoken Russian who - a tricky and controversial jump included in his routine, but not in Lysacek's - and he is another stay-away. The line from Russia is that Plushenko experienced pain while landing a quad in training, but that sounds to me like the sort of thing he'd have fought through if there had been another Olympic medal at stake.

"It does feel like an anti-climax in some ways," British pairs skater told me from Turin, the city hosting the tournament. "But it's also exciting because you get to see who the future champions are.

"It's going to be more in the mix, the judges don't really know who to put where, and it'll be more performance-based than political I think - hopefully."

The only thing keeping King and partner Stacey Kemp from the ice is a kidney infection picked up by the latter, and King cut a worried figure on Monday waiting for news of her recovery. If they do get to compete, though, they will find several top pairs absent.

"We're pumped, we want to go for the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014 and really want to improve now," added King.

"We found it really easy to get back on the ice and get working. But for some of the teams it's their last season and after the Olympics is a low point for them.

"So there are a few top teams who aren't here. That's the way it works, you hang in there long enough, the teams ahead of you drop out and you end up getting medals one day."

And that is the appeal of these World Championships - not in seeing the Olympic masters strut their stuff in a low-key encore, but in getting the first clues as to the gold medallists four years hence.

Top Chinese pairs skaters Shen Xue and Zhao Hongbo have retired (for the second and final time, we are told) in the wake of their Olympic gold. They are already yesterday's news. The duo to inherit their crown may well be all but unheard-of right now. These things can change in far less than four years.

You need only look as far as Kemp and King's British stablemates in short track speed skating, a sport governed by the same body in the UK, the .

, at 19 years of age, got through the preliminary heats in Vancouver, and even then found herself dumped out of the competition at the quarter-final stage.

By contrast, Christie - marked out for some time as one for the future by her national performance director - at her sport's World Championships in Bulgaria last weekend, narrowly missing out on a medal.

For young Britons, post-Olympic World Championships with a few top names missing are the ideal environments in which to kickstart their next bids for glory at the Games.

"We're determined to get to Sochi and do our best," concluded figure skater King.

"We thought it would be ages to Vancouver and now we're sitting here in Italy thinking 'Wow, that was fast'. So I think it'll come round quite quick. We've got a lot to work on anyway, that'll take our time up."

Life has already taken a new turn for King at any rate - his partner on the ice is now one step closer to becoming his partner in another sense, after the 25-year-old proposed to her in improbably romantic circumstances on the night of the closing ceremony.

"We were having a team party and everyone had just come back from the ceremony," he recalled.

"On our balcony we had a beautiful view of the whole city and it was lit up at night, so I went down on one knee and asked her.

"It was a good end to the Olympics. I'd been planning it since November last year - we've been dating for five years now and it seemed a good moment to do it."

Counterintuitive though it may feel, the end of an Olympics is a good moment to start a lot of things. Watch the highlights from the Figure Skating World Championships on 91Èȱ¬ TV in between Football Focus and the Boat Race on Saturday, 3 April, and see if you can spot the new beginnings that will lead to gold in 2014.

Further reading if you're keen:
91Èȱ¬ Scotland speaks to GB ice dancers
(two of the nicest people you'll ever meet) tell the Canadian Press why they're desperate to make good at the Worlds
A full from excellent Associated Press writers Nancy Armour and Colleen Barry (via USA Today)