Spinning Gold

By Martha Duffy

Lucky the sport that the camera smiles on. Television's appetite for photogenic action is insatiable, and pursuits that were once mere cottage industries of athletics have been streamlined and glamorized for the diversion of millions of viewers.

Take figure skating. It used to be an arcane discipline that grew out of skating on frozen ponds and swamps, where the ice was black and people could trace their names -- or grapevines or Maltese crosses -- on a winter evening. Those innocent exercises gradually evolved into amateur competitions in which painfully exacting school figures counted for much of a skater's score, the rest being determined by the more spectacular free skating.

The camera did not like the slow, nearly invisible school figures, and neither did the skaters who, in the 1980s, performed them with declining skill and panache. This year, however, just in time for the Olympics, the sport is reborn with the banishment of the dreaded set patterns. What is left is an effortlessly pleasurable sight for the spectator. Don't know a Lutz from a Salchow? The TV commentators will tell you, or you can ignore the voice-over and just watch graceful young athletes interpret the music in wonderfully tricky ways.

The elimination of school figures, which required years of concentration to perfect, has revitalized the sport in another way. Now anyone in the top talent pool can win any given competition. Says American coach Carol Heiss Jenkins: "It will be more like tennis -- the winner will be whoever is good on that day." She should know: her pupil Lisa Ervin, a mere 14 years old, leaped her way into fourth place at last month's U.S. national championships. Another two points and she would have been the youngest competitor at Albertville.

Ervin was competing in the strongest field of U.S. skaters since 1956, when the Olympic women's team was Tenley Albright, Heiss (both future gold medalists) and Catherine Machado. This year's trio could sweep the medals, as they did at last year's world's championship in Munich. If they do not, the reason will probably be Japan's Midori Ito, 21. She is 4 ft. 9 in. and built like a fireplug. But can she fly! At Munich her image was set indelibly, warts and all, when she took off and whirled, airborne, into the stands. That was the embarrassing part. Then she went back out again, her radiant smile lighting up the arena. Among the Americans, the national champ is Kristi Yamaguchi, 21, a 5-ft. sprite from Fremont, Calif., known for her precise, delicate artistry. Runner-up is Nancy Kerrigan, 22, of Stoneham, Mass., a Kate Hepburn-style beauty whose elegance carries over into her performing style. Third -- but national champion in 1991 -- is Tonya Harding, 22, of Portland, Ore., a bold, natural athlete who pays little attention to nuance, less to music. Tonya gets out there and jumps.

These four skaters, by most assessments, will be competing for just about the most glamorous gold medal in winter sports; the winner will be the reigning Ice Queen. There is a temptation among some followers of the sport to see the Olympic conflict in terms of athleticism (Ito) vs. artistry (Yamaguchi). This face-off would give Ito the edge. As ex-Olympic champ Dorothy Hamill puts it, "Kristi is graceful and musical. But when Midori skates, she has me on the edge of my seat." The excitement comes from the power of Ito's leaps. No skimming above the surface -- her jumps pop. She could execute all the categories at age 11, and had perfected them at 12. As Canadian choreographer Sandra Bezic says, "She blows away most guys in the field."

Ito lives in Nagoya, Japan's fourth largest city, working with just one coach, Machiko Yamada, and even living with her since Ito's parents separated 11 years ago. Albertville will be the culmination of 17 years' work for both women, and they are planning a program with somewhat more focus on artistry. It is unlikely, though, that they will try to imitate the lithe and pretty Yamaguchi. Says Yamada: "I always stress with Midori that this is a sport."

Experts agree that Ito has set new jumping standards in the sport. Dick Button, a TV commentator and former Olympic winner, marvels at an Ito special: a triple Axel followed directly by a camel spin. Says he: "What's amazing is that she lands the jump at tremendous speed, arrests the forward motion and creates a rotation." Inevitably, others are catching up. Says Ito wistfully: "I cannot make a mistake because people not quite so good as I am can win since they have some higher artistry." It may not say so in the rule book, but smiles do have a way of counting, and Midori Ito has set some standards in that department too.

Tonya Harding has not been as consistent a performer as Ito, but they have a lot in common: ice is native ground to both, and they take to it without fear. Harding's story is a rare one: she is a scrappy kid from the wrong side of the tracks who has had to battle herself, her family and the high price of skating < mastery to become an international performer.

Figure skating is not really a rich man's sport. Most families of successful competitors have had to make sacrifices and seek outside help. But skaters usually have backgrounds more stable than Harding's. Her father, a laborer, was her mother's fourth husband; there have been two more since. A coach took over in Tonya's teen years, but the girl rebelled and entered what has been an off-again on-again marriage. That alone makes her unusual. So deep is their dedication that many female competitors could be called the Skating Nuns. A married Ice Queen is a very rare creature indeed.

At last month's U.S. national championships in Orlando, Fla., Harding was several pounds overweight, and she sustained an ankle injury in practice. But with typical grit she stuck to her program, which includes a triple Axel, a 3 1/2-revolution trap of a jump that only Ito and she have landed in competition. In the short program she fell. In the long program, she tumbled again and lost any chance of catching Kerrigan. Was she foolhardy to try? Maybe, but she gave notice that, win or lose, she means business.

Triples are now the yardstick of the sport. They range in difficulty from the toe loop and Salchow, through the loop, flip and Lutz to the Axel, the ultimate challenge. Senior male competitors do triples routinely, but they are very tough for women who lack sufficient strength. One difference between watching on TV and seeing a competition is that at rinkside, spectators see all 20-odd contenders, not just the top handful. Among the lower rankings the number of falls is shocking. "There's a big element of risk," says Don Laws, who coached Scott Hamilton and knows that you cannot hold back and win. "They're not out there doing 60% in a polished way. They're doing 100% of their capability, and it's not quite under their belts."

Of all the top ladies, Nancy Kerrigan is the closest to having a cult. Purists love her. She does graceful jumps, finishing them with an open, ample spread of her arms. She doesn't have a triple Axel and doesn't jar judges or spectators by trying one. She just skates as if annealed to the music. In some respects she is a throwback to Peggy Fleming, who gave the impression that she would skate with exactly the same purity if she were alone on a pond. To Kerrigan, the great advantage of her elevated status is that she usually gets to practice on an empty rink. "You can get artsy and try things out," she says. "Maybe what you really want is to show the music off." Spoken like an artist.

Kristi Yamaguchi does not have a triple Axel either, but that's about the only weapon her arsenal lacks, and in the past year she has completed the transition from a cute kid trickster to a poised and elegant stylist. She too had to leave her home as a teenager and pursue superior coaching at Edmonton, Alta. Canadian champion Kurt Browning, who also trains there, is a pal and a one-man cheering squad. Bezic, who has worked out many routines for the likes of Katarina Witt and Brian Boitano, is also on Yamaguchi's team. Bezic devised a short program for her that was the most distinctive at the U.S. nationals.

The choice of the Blue Danube waltz at first appeared to be cliche, but both its beauty and familiarity make it a challenge that Yamaguchi lives up to. "It's strong music," she observes, "so I have to move strongly to it, using deeper plies for more power and smoothness." Bezic found the inspiration for her choreography not in any "story" or dramatic line, but simply in the thought of a girl at a mirror realizing that she is now a woman. It seems that when Yamaguchi boards with Bezic to work on the routines, she ends the day in front of the mirror in her room, going over her moves. Her coach calls her an ideal pupil. "She never forgets any nuance," says Bezic. "Last July I asked her to look straight at the judges over her shoulder at a certain moment, and in January there she was on TV doing it."

They are at their most beautiful, these rarefied athletes, in the six-minute practice session where competitors warm up, a few at a time. Done by a Kerrigan, the waltz jump, a mere half revolution, is a perfection of grace. A double Axel is clear and open, not the whipped-up whir that a triple must be. Yamaguchi and Harding may land perfect leaps in tandem, a few feet apart on the ice. All the women are intently absorbed, and their jumps look less like stunts than whitecaps bubbling out of waves. To a purist, Ito and Harding may lack finesse, Yamaguchi passion, Kerrigan the competitive killer instinct. But one of them will harness her painfully acquired skills to her natural effervescence and skate away with the gold medal. It could be one of the Olympics' great performances.

With reporting by Barry Hillenbrand/Nagoya and Ellie McGrath/San Francisco