ST. LOUIS (AP) – Johnny Weir is in town, ready to skate off with another national championship.

A season of injury, distractions and unsatisfactory finishes is behind him. No more worrying about his program measuring up on the difficulty meter. No more preoccupation with the new judging system.

Time to lay it all on the ice.

“I’ve come back to be the three-time national champion. I haven’t come back to be two-time national champion and one-time bronze medalist or silver medalist,” Weir said Wednesday. “That’s not how I play this game.”

He played the game so well the last two years that Weir stood atop the podium at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, wearing gold.

That should have set him up for a spectacular Olympic season, capped by a strong challenge to the top Europeans and Canadians at the Turin Games.

Instead, it’s been one problem after another for the 21-year-old Weir.

The season began with Weir and coach Priscilla Hill tearing apart his programs after they were told the levels of difficulty weren’t, well, difficult enough. Then Weir had only 11/2 weeks before unveiling the retooled routines at an exhibition competition in Japan.

“A week and a half of actual training did not cut it,” Hill said.

“Then the frustration on top of it … made it more difficult. There were all kinds of things that went along with it. It just kept going and there was no time for him to get into his normal training system that happens in the fall.”

Weir went to Skate Canada unsure if the program would hold up. Instead, his body didn’t hold up. He fell on the first jump of his free skate, hurt his left ankle and, although he finished the routine, he was only seventh in the standings.

So now two things needed healing. It took two weeks before Weir could attempt most of the maneuvers in his programs.

“This season hasn’t been best by any means,” he said. “Falling out of that zone where I feel comfortable and I feel good is something that’s really hard to do. I had an impenetrable shell around me for the last couple of seasons. This season I started to let things off the ice affect my on-the-ice personality and behavior. It wasn’t clicking every day.

“I never really had time to sit, relax and train. I was just constantly playing catch-up. That’s not an enviable position for any skater to be in.”

Especially one with designs on skating in the Olympics.

So Weir was back in competition at Cup of Russia in late November. He came in third behind Evgeni Plushenko and Stephane Lambiel, two of the favorites for Turin.

Weir could have gone to the Grand Prix final as an alternate after several skaters dropped out. But he stayed home to train, which Hill called a “blessing in disguise.”

“He’s been smart and he’s listened well,” Hill added. “He’s at the normal point of preparation for nationals. All the other things didn’t help in the Grand Prix season, but he really missed training only for the Grand Prix season. Skipping the Grand Prix final gave us the time we needed to finally train and that was all he really needed.”

Well, not quite. Weir, his confidence ebbing, was doing more soul-searching than ever.

“In any profession, it’s difficult to balance personal life with your work life,” he said. “How many high-powered businessmen come home and beat their wife or kids because work isn’t going well? It’s ultimately very similar to any profession.

“It’s harder when you’re in the public eye. Like Britney Spears, I can see her carrying teddy bears around until she’s 80 because she’s never had a chance to grow up,” he said. “It’s tough to balance all these life lessons that are supposedly so great to learn, and then having to go into the rink the next morning to do your 4-minute, 30-second long program.”

Weir knows it’s time to put all those tangential issues aside. There’s a national title and an Olympic berth to be had, beginning with the short program Thursday.

Then again, he refuses to be defined by the final standings.

“I don’t shoot for just medaling. I shoot for being the best and I shoot for being the best that I can be at that time,” he said. “If I’m first, second, 11th here, as long as I’ve done the best I can, I’ll be pleased with that. That sounds very cookie-cutter of me to say.

“It would be great to go to the Olympic Games and the world championships, as I’ve said all year. But I’m not placing all of my worth as a skater and all of these years of blood, sweat and tears on one event to make it to another event.”

AP-ES-01-11-06 1835EST