She had delivered the supreme moment of these Games, a figure skating display so soaring, so superior to everyone else's, that it really did feel as if we had all been on hand for an iconic Olympic moment.
Women's figure skating is not the sort of fare to have grizzled sports reporters swooning but at least one unsentimental chronicler was reduced to enthusing to me afterwards that he had witnessed the winter equivalent of Usain Bolt. Yes, Bolt on ice. It was that special.
Just as in her short routine, skating to a James Bond medley, the only conclusion after Thursday's free programme was that nobody does it better. Or ever has done.Kim is only 19. On the slimmest shoulders, Korea's heroine, the girl they already knew as 'Queen Yu-Na' had a nation's fairytale to execute and did so with what could only properly be described as amazing grace.
For a second time in three days she smashed the world record under the relatively new scoring system, recording a total of 228.56pts which was 23.06pts better than her nearest rival, Japan's Mao Asada, who became the first woman to land two 3½-rotation triple axels in the same Olympic programme.
Yet she still had no chance. If Kim's performance had been under the old judging system, it would have been Bolero revisited – a row of perfect sixes just as Torvill and Dean were awarded more than a quarter of a century earlier.
Katarina Witt, the great double champion, was here and could only conclude that she had watched a teenager taking her sport to a new level with her interpretation of Gershwin's Concerto in F. An athlete not just with all the German's old elegance and lyricism but with a staggering 21st century athleticism, allied to faultless technique, made to look effortless.
Kim landed six triple jumps and five others, a total of seven combinations, and the sure clarity of each landing was unnervingly brilliant. When she finished, curtsied and began to cry, the rink was flooded by so many cuddly toys thrown in her honour that it looked like the ground floor at Hamleys.
When her free programme score of 150.06pts was announced, she put her hand across her mouth in astonishment at the world record, while her Canadian coach Brian Orser, who had been so agitated he appeared to make every triple jump with her by rinkside, could only marvel: "I thought 140 would be a great score – but she got 150. Wow! It's one of those programmes that, when it's done like that, it's like perfection."
Kim herself was left equally incredulous. "I still can't believe the score; it's almost as close as the men's," she said. Indeed, it would have earned her ninth place in the men's event, and that is without the scoring potential offered by an extra 30 seconds and one more jump.
Orser said: "I told her: 'It's no time to hold back, to be conservative or cautious. Be Olympic. Yes, you're beautiful. Yes, the programmes are beautiful. Beautiful lines, great presentation and choreography – but you've got to be Olympic and fierce.' And she was."
The same could be said for Rochette, who blew a kiss skywards in tribute to her mother after her bronze medal-winning skate and then talked movingly of the inspiration 55 year-old Therese had always given her.
It was clearly cathartic for the girl from Quebec to talk at length afterwards about the woman who had pushed and cajoled her towards her dream down the years.
On the ice, Rochette did not think she would be able to skate at all. "I don't know how I did. My legs were shaking, my mind was not here. But I am glad I did and 10 years from now when the pain has gone a bit, I would wish I skated here and I know that's what my mom would want me to do. I just wanted to make her proud." She did that and more. She made a nation proud.
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