Tanith Belbin falls as her partner Benjamin Agosto looks on as they perform their compulsory dance in the ice dance competition at the World Figure Skating Championships last March. Associated Press Photo.

Flaws can be hidden, glossed over and prettied up so masterfully few would even guess they’re there.

Inevitably, though, the patches wear thin and the cracks show. Reach that point, and it will take more than a touchup or two to make everything right.

That’s where ice dancers Tanith Belbin and Ben Agosto found themselves last spring, leaving a world championships they’d been favored to win without a medal of any color. With the Vancouver Olympics only two years away.

“It was a wake-up call for us to really stop and examine what we needed to do with our careers,” Agosto said. “Move away from our comfort zone.”

Literally. Three weeks after the world championships, Belbin and Agosto announced they were leaving Igor Shpilband and Marina Zoueva and their home base of Detroit to work with Natalia Linichuk and Gennadi Karponosov in Aston, Pa.

Belbin and Agosto’s first competition since relocating is this weekend at Skate America, where they’ll take on reigning world champions Isabelle Delobel and Olivier Schoenfelder. The season’s first Grand Prix event begins Friday in Everett, Wash., with the compulsory dance and men’s and pairs short programs.

Skaters may be famous for switching coaches as often as their costumes, but this split was monumental. Belbin and Agosto had worked with Shpilband since he paired them in 1998 and, with his guidance, had become the most successful ice dance team the United States has ever had, winning the silver medal at the Turin Olympics.

They had also grown up in Detroit, establishing lives outside of skating.

“We definitely had roots there,” said Belbin, who, at 24, is two years younger than Agosto. “It was, emotionally more than anything else, difficult to leave.”

They felt, though, as if they were in a rut. Sure, they’d won their fifth straight U.S. title, and clearly were still among the world’s top teams. Their expression and artistry are unmatched; whether it’s a lighthearted hoe-down or a sizzling tango, they can sell a program with such conviction it puts Oscar winners to shame.

But they’ve been knocked for their fundamentals, things like speed and basic skating skills, even the difficulty of their lifts. Though they’d spent long hours working on those in the summer of 2007, the flaws were still there.

And as long as they were, Belbin and Agosto knew they’d remain part of the pack instead of the ones to beat.

“We’d almost become complacent, I think. Just with the familiar settings and surroundings, we were too comfortable,” Belbin said. “We had a lot of weaknesses that Igor and Marina addressed as well and they knew, but it was difficult because we had been together for so long. It was easier for them to work around it and try to mask it in the program rather than go ahead and attack them and attack the problems and fix them.

“We all had the best intentions, we all wanted the same things,” Belbin added. “We just didn’t have a clear view of the path that was necessary to take to get there.”

Linichuk and Karponosov, however, did. Olympic champions in 1980, they have gone on to coach a star-studded list of dance teams, including Nagano gold medalists Pasha Grishuk and Evgeny Platov, and two-time world champions Anjelika Krylova and Oleg Ovsyannikov. Linichuk and Karponosov also coach Belbin and Agosto’s biggest rivals, reigning Grand Prix final and European champions Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin.

Despite Belbin and Agosto’s previous success, the first thing Linichuk and Karponosov did when they arrived was overhaul their skating style. The way they leaned, whether they rose or bent at the knee — all those little things they’d done for so many years were broken down, replaced by new techniques.

For weeks, they did nothing but work on their skating skills. Even creating new programs was put on hold.

“Our coaches just said, ‘Trust us, you need this. We can’t just cover up your weaknesses with choreography anymore, we have to fix them for the Olympics,” Belbin said. “Without that, we’re just trying to get lucky as we always have. Just trying to get lucky.

“This time we have to fix the problems so we stand on two feet and be confident on ice, so we feel we really are the two best skaters out there.”

The process can be frustrating. Just when Belbin and Agosto felt they’d mastered one thing, Linichuk and Karponosov would change it or add new skills. But it’s also invigorating, Agosto said, like being a kid discovering skating all over again.

Besides, this is what they wanted to do — had to do — to have a chance of winning in Vancouver.

Because Belbin and Agosto made such a steady climb after Shpilband teamed them, culminating in their silver medal in Turin, they never really had to identify specific goals. Or at least not admit them out loud.

With Vancouver looming, though, there is no time to be polite. Not only do they want to be world and Olympic champions, they want to be one of those powerhouse dance couples that dominates the competition.

“We feel like we have the experience and the knowledge now to really become the best team in the world,” Belbin said. “And that’s what we want. That’s really, really what we want. If it’s not this season, it’ll be next season.”

Even if it meant leaving their comfort zone.

“There’s no time but now. This is it,” Agosto said. “We’ve identified that’s what we want, and why not go for it all the way?”