No Holiday on Ice

By Martha Duffy

Once upon a time -- only a few years ago, really -- a skating rink at dawn bore a certain resemblance to a monastery. The assembled acolytes performed their early devotions, except in this case, they were tracing meticulous patterns on the ice with profound concentration.

That lyrical tableau is no longer to be seen. Four years ago, the lords of figure skating eliminated school figures -- the art of laying down perfect circles and then retracing the etching exactly -- from competitions. The decision changed the nature of the sport -- and brought whoops of joy from would-be champions. Now they could concentrate on flashy leaps and spins; certain skaters -- Nancy Kerrigan among them -- who had trouble with patchwork could surge ahead.

One would think this liberation would make the sport slightly less laborious. Not at all. Skating remains one of the most arduous athletic endeavors a child can pursue. To be an Olympic-caliber competitor in any sport requires tremendous devotion at an early age, but a youngster who desires to be the best on ice faces special demands. Serious training can easily cost $40,000 a year in coaching fees, costumes, skates and living expenses. The little prodigy who can already do a double flip rarely lives near one of the dozen or so shrines where the top coaches preside: either a family relocates to a place like Colorado Springs or Lakewood, Ohio, or the parents make boarding arrangements. Contrary to common perception, the sport is not patrician, at least not since World War II. Often parents must take two jobs to meet costs.

No matter how poor the skater, paying the bills is easy compared with following the training regimen. Roughly four hours on the ice, five or six days a week (a slight reduction from the old days). And corner cutters might as well not bother. Says coach Carlo Fassi, who trained Peggy Fleming, among others: "If you stop for two or three weeks, it's grueling to get into shape again." Then comes weight training to strengthen the upper body. Finally, there are ballet or jazz classes. Scott Davis, 21, rebelled against these extra lessons until his Colorado Springs-based coach, Kathy Casey, told him to pack his bags and head back home to Montana. He surrendered, and is now a two- time U.S. gold medalist.

What propels a little child, sometimes just three or four, into this paramilitary life and persuades his parents to change their lives in order to support the endeavor? For one thing, the future stars tend to know right away that they can really excel at this. In Kerrigan's case, her group of six-year- olds was still sitting on the ice waiting for the teacher to show them how to stand and glide when little Nancy began sketching spins. Skating talent -- if not the persistence to perfect it -- is almost always obvious.

The dream follows magically, as dreams do. Says coach Don Laws: "For a girl, it's very often the vision of Dorothy Hamill. Her Olympic year was 1976, but they still idolize her. All the young ones see themselves going to the Olympics." So may their parents, but the financial reward is more and more a factor -- the heady prospect of endorsements and contracts.

Fassi emphasizes that determination is all. "Form is not always consistent," he says, "particularly when learning a new jump." Casey says she always keeps in mind that her talented charges have given up some social life: "Late nights, club trotting, little of that." But not even persistence guarantees success. Particularly in girls, the body changes in adolescence with the growth of hips and breasts, and a skater may gain too much weight. When Tonya Harding added 8 lbs. after her 1991 national title, she put herself out of the running. The psyche may also fluctuate: fear of competing, as Fassi notes, is paralyzing. Kerrigan and her coaches, who have lived through her tendency to omit jumps in performance, know this too.

If either Kerrigan or Harding does not skate for the U.S. Olympic team, the alternate is Michelle Kwan, only 13. As gold medalist and TV commentator Dick Button observes, she is already "beautifully put together," and she is equally adept at putting together her life. When her coach, Frank Carroll, advised her to spend another year maturing in the junior division, she waited until he went away for a few days, and successfully applied for senior status by herself. Placing second in the Nationals in Detroit two weeks ago was a triumph. On the ice she shows the kind of bravura that launches a major career.

No matter who represents the U.S., they will find some strong, attractive competition, but no one who is dominant. Among them:

Oksana Baiul, 16, put the skating world on notice when she won last year's world title in Prague. (See box.)

Surya Bonaly, 20, is the purist's bane and the crowd's darling. This tiny French girl leaps with abandon, spins her own way, often at a scary tilt, and in between pumps her way around the rink. But within the past 15 months she has decided to add some discipline to her act. Her stroking is smoother, her program better paced. She is talented enough to execute difficult moves correctly and zany enough not to lose her wit and vitality if she chooses to.

Chen Lu, 16, is the first skater of consequence to come out of China. Born into a family of athletes -- her father was a member of the national hockey team -- she nonetheless learned much about her art from videotapes. She has a liquid style and a command of the ice beyond her years. So far, she has proved to be no more than competent at the crucial jumps, and at times her programs have been more dutiful than sparkling. But this is a newcomer to international competition, emerging from a country with no skating tradition. She has gained experience on exhibition tours, but she may need another year or so to express the authority that seems innate to her.

For athletes in this charmed circle, it's a great life if you don't weaken. Dick Button marvels at the number of competitions (Skate America, Skate Canada, Piruetten), plus the tours that clog a skater's year. "The pressure is never off," he says, "especially in an Olympic year." Button is skeptical of the demands made by the three-month-long, 59-city Tom Collins tour (April 11 to July 12), but in fact this is the ambition of every first- class competitive skater. Collins, the impresario, picks mostly Olympic and national medalists, along with some other favorites, and he treats them well: good hotels, flights rather than bus hops for distances of more than 200 miles and, best of all, good money. The pay varies -- reportedly $5,000 for an Olympic bronze winner, ascending to $15,000 a gig for a gold medalist. Kerrigan has signed for the upcoming hit parade, as have Brian Boitano, Viktor Petrenko, Davis, Baiul and Bonaly.

For the skater who turns professional -- an evaporating distinction now -- there are ice shows too. For every top performer, endorsements can pay for all the years of sacrifice. An enduring favorite like Hamill still has plenty of corporate friends, among them, NutraSweet, Kitchenaid and Miracle-Gro.

So with these money trees to be shaken, why are major professionals like Boitano (gold medalist in 1984) and Britain's Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean (also 1984 winners, in dance) returning to the upcoming Olympics? After all, their show-biz routines are smooth and easy, very scant on triple jumps. Possibly it all goes back to those patches; the new rules have reopened the doors to onetime champions who let their mastery of school figures lapse long ago. But they may feel nostalgia for the old discipline, for the satisfaction of finding, in devotion and repetition, the perfect triple jump.

With reporting by Leonora Dodsworth/Rome and Lawrence Mondi/New York