Star Turns At the Games, almost anyone can become a global celebrity. Here are a few American contenders

By David E. Thigpen

THE TRUCKER WORE TIGHTS

For years, the barmaid served drinks in a Delaware pub, putting away her tips. The trucker repaved asphalt highways in New Jersey. Not exactly the easiest ways to cover the expenses of a world-class figure-skating pair, but for Calla Urbanski (the waitress) and Rocky Marval (the trucker), those jobs paved the path to Albertville. Urbanski, 30, and Marval, 26, had both skated competitively for a decade without ever notching a major victory. Two years ago, they dropped longtime partners and teamed up with each other for one last shot at the Olympics. It clicked: their erratic skating began rising to the sublime. In January they won the U.S. Figure Skating Championship with a smartly choreographed performance that showed off the pair's magnetism, technique and giddy elan. The crowd loved it. "I guess people aren't used to truck drivers wearing tights," says Marval. The judges loved it too: the win clinched an Olympic spot for the duo.

JUST DON'T CALL HIM ALVA

For a great downhill racer, there's no holding back, but AJ Kitt also knows that one secret of success is not to peak too early. So far, the 23-year-old American is right on schedule. Two years ago, he finished fourth in a World Cup downhill, earning a reputation as a comer. This season he bagged a World Cup downhill victory at Val d'Isere, the first world-class win by an American male since Bill Johnson struck Olympic gold in 1984. Kitt was serving notice that he had arrived -- just in time, if all goes according to plan, to max out next week on the slopes near Val d'Isere for an Olympic medal. (The A in AJ stands for Alva, which the racer despises; the J signifies nothing but goes well with A.) After skiing on the new Olympic downhill run last month at Val d'Isere, Kitt complained that its twisty course might disrupt his timing. But his resolve is unshaken. "I don't let anything get in my way," he says. And now it's time to hold nothing back.

THE DYNAMIC RECOVERY DUO

Comeback stories in the Olympics crop up as often as TV commercials, but few athletes have come from as far behind as two American speed skaters. Early last year, three-time Olympian Mary Docter (near left), 30, checked herself into a clinic for substance abuse. She now concedes that her use of alcohol, marijuana and cocaine was partly responsible for her poor finish in the 1988 Games. When Docter qualified in December for the 1,500-m, 3,000-m and 5,000-m events, it was a double-barreled victory. Says she: "I've stayed straight."

Just last June, while training for her first Olympics, Michelle Kline, 23, was the most seriously injured of four U.S. speed skaters when the Jeep they were riding in skidded into a light pole. She spent 12 days in intensive care, immobilized by five cracked ribs and a punctured lung. Going to the Games, said the experts, was clearly not an option. "I just wondered if I'd ever feel normal again," recalls Kline. But the next six weeks brought her first halting steps, and two weeks later she began intensive weight lifting and aerobic training. Six months more and she was up to her earlier form as the two-time overall U.S. women's champion. Kline is the only American to have won an Olympic slot in five different speed-skating events.

A WUNDERKIND ON THE WILD SLED

Less imaginative people might have urged him to dedicate his talents to basketball or football. But at 14, Robert Pipkins was already enamored of gymnastics and swimming. That was uncommon enough for a New York City youth, but after his mother brought home a flyer about tryouts for the junior national luge team, Pipkins decided to travel to Lake Placid and give it a try. He immediately loved the luge for the "exciting and risky" way the tiny sled carries one man at high speed. In January, after only three months of top-level training, Pipkins, 18, became a member of the U.S. Olympic luge team. Two weeks later, he slid to the junior world championship in Sapporo, Japan. An engineering major at Drexel University, Pipkins is the first black ever to compete on the international luge circuit, a fact he appreciates but does not dwell on. "It just means people of any race can do any sport," he says. He is more interested in becoming the first American to win a luge medal.