A GIFTED high-school girl born 87 days too late, a pair of record-breaking triple axels and an advertisement for milk chocolate have provoked the Japanese to an explosion of national outrage.

The seething public discontent is focused on the rarefied world of women’s figure skating — a sport at which Japan excels and upon which hopes for gold at the Turin Winter Olympics are heavily stacked.

The non-appearance of Japan’s greatest medal hope on a cruel technicality has even managed to rile senior political figures, with the Chief Cabinet Secretary declaring the whole affair regrettable.

Not for the first time Japan has fallen in love with a uniquely talented teenage sports phenomenon.

Despite her tender years, Mao Asada is the only female ever to have landed two triple axels in a single performance. The axel is the only jump that figure skaters perform with a forward outside edge take-off — on all the others the take-off is from a backwards position. An extra half-rotation makes the triple axel difficult and exciting to watch.

Since the age of 12 Asada has been performing feats that only a small handful of women skaters have ever managed, and is regarded by many around the world as the greatest jumper in the sport’s history.

Unfortunately, the International Skating Union rules, which cite health concerns for young athletes, dictate that she had to have turned 15 by July 1 last year to be eligible: her birthday was not until September.

To the horror of millions of Japanese, the country’s skating authorities have adopted a “rules are rules” attitude to the affair and have refused to lobby the International Olympic Committee for any latitude with the regulations.

In the past athletes younger than Asada have competed successfully in the Olympics.

In 1996 a team of girls whose ages ranged from 14 to 17, including 14-year-old gymnast Dominique Moceanu, won the gold medal for the United States. Nadia Comaneci, the Romanian gymnast who won five Olympic gold medals and is considered by some as one of the greatest athletes of the 20th century, astounded onlookers with her performance at the 1976 Summer Games in Montreal aged just 14. The figure skater Jan Hoffmann, two-time world champion and Olympic silver medallist, competed in the 1968 Winter Games aged just 12.

Hundreds of furious e-mails and phone calls have been fired at the Japan Skating Federation, most focusing their rage on the image of Asada, in the peak of health, watching the Olympics at home on television. She has said she will work towards the Winter Olympics in 2010, but many — including former champions — believe that her unique skills may lose their edge in the four-year lag.

The national misery was compounded last month when Asada won the Grand Prix finals — which prompted Junichiro Koizumi, the Prime Minister, to ask why the rules could not be bent to allow her to skate in Turin.

The answer has become the stuff of conspiracy theories, the main one being the Ghana chocolate theory. Last month the confectioner Lotte, a sponsor of the Japanese team at the Winter Games and the official partner of the Japan Olympic Committee, launched a campaign for its Ghana brand of chocolate featuring three women skaters — Fumie Suguri, Shizuka Arakawa and Miki Ando — on a chocolate rink.

It is these three women who will be representing Japan in Turi; but their official selection came long after the advertisement had established them as the “faces” of the Japanese Olympic effort. If Japan lobbied the IOC to let Asada skate and was successful, goes the theory, Lotte’s campaign would be flawed by having sold Japan on the wrong trio of skaters.

THE YOUTHFUL CHAMPIONS

• At the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Marjorie Gestring was the youngest winner of an individual Olympic event when she won a diving title at the age of 13
• Nadia Comaneci, 14, right, winner of five Olympic gold medals in 1976, was the first to be scored a perfect 10 in an Olympic gymnastic event
• Dominique Moceanu was the youngest member, at the age of 14, of the winning US gymnastics team in the 1996 Olympics
• Jan Hoffman represented East Germany in figure skating at four Olympic Games, first competing in 1968, aged 12
• Gymnast Kerri Strug was the youngest US Olympian at the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona. She was 14

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