End of the Winter's Tale

By Martha Duffy

* It's been a long campaign. When the New York Daily News headlined T.G.I.F., almost everyone could respond with relief. F usually means Friday, but better than that, final. First came the assault, then the arrests, then the wranglings in court. As the world watched with fascination, the January attack on Nancy Kerrigan fueled a media frenzy, amply supported by the public's craving for the latest swill. Checkbook journalists, dubious gurus and assorted sleaze hounds soon joined in. By the time the drama was served up cold on the Olympic rink, it had all the ingredients of a classic face-off: Kerrigan, the almost too model American miss vs. Tonya Harding, the grungy underdog whose ex-husband and entourage allegedly tried to knock off Kerrigan to establish their own proletarian ice queen -- and money machine.

After all, all, all that, however, the gold medal in women's figure skating went to neither Nancy Kerrigan nor Tonya Harding but to Ukraine's Oksana Baiul. The outcome was a shock -- but not entirely a surprise. Any member of last Wednesday's TV sport audience knew that Harding was scarcely in physical shape to contend for a medal and that Kerrigan was stronger and more poised than she has ever been. But the enchantress was Baiul, 16, who presented herself elaborately costumed as the Black Swan in Tchaikovsky's ballet. Feathers and all.

It was naive but inspired -- sublimely expressive of the changeling that Baiul is. Her Friday long program, which secured the prize, was shakier, but she moved with rare, sinuous rhythms on the ice. And, irony of ironies, she was recovering from her own injuries suffered the day before. Her physical pain was evident, framing her performance with agony more immediate than the video memories of Kerrigan weeping in Detroit seven weeks ago. The bizarre accident in which the Ukrainian collided with a German competitor during practice had created not only a new victim but prepared the way for a new heroine. Baiul required stitches on her right shin and two injections of pain killers on Friday. But her smile reached the rafters even as she flirted shamelessly with folks in the jury box. It is magic she has used before. Says a French judge, who understandably requests anonymity and was not on the Olympic panel: "You have to be careful with Oksana. You are drawn to her face and forget to watch her feet."

To the bitter Kerrigan entourage and many skating observers, that's just what the judges did. Baiul's performance was not nearly as clean as her rival's; she two-footed a triple flip (a major gaffe) and simplified another jump. Critics were quick to point out that her first-place rankings each came from four East bloc countries and a German judge from the defunct Democratic Republic. Since the early 1980s, the majority of the nine judges' rankings has carried the day rather than the old system of totaling all points; if Kerrigan had been competing in 1976, when Dorothy Hamill won, the gold medal would have been hers.

Afterward, Kerrigan said, "For me, in my mind and my heart I won. I've learned a lot about myself these last couple of months. There are always some doubts, but I didn't let them enter this year." Others were not so restrained. Her coaches, Evy and Mary Scotvold, refused to utter Baiul's name at a postcontest press conference -- she was instead "the first-place girl." Claire Ferguson, president of the U.S. Figure Skating Association (U.S.F.S.A.), snapped, "Nancy doesn't have that sassy look that Oksana has." It didn't help matters that Baiul's coach, Galina Zmievskaya, marched around wearing the gold medal and boasted, "It's mine."

Kerrigan should be proud of her cleanly skated performance. She had energy to burn and was perhaps hampered by statelier-than-thou choreography. If they awarded prizes for costumes, she would have prevailed. Her dress, designed as always by Vera Wang, had the kind of unobtrusive elegance that enhances rather than jars a performance. By contrast, Baiul wore a fussy pink concoction trimmed with fake fur that broke her line. Most of the other dresses were nightclub glitz.

People who don't know a Lutz from a spread eagle know that Kerrigan won the money jackpot. Already comfortable from endorsements, she adds major deals with Disney and Ray-Ban and is poring over offers from cosmetics makers, toy companies and bedding outfits. Reebok and Seiko, who had the wit to sign her up before she became a household name, have intensified their wooing. The former outfitted her family with Norway-proof togs; the latter held a dinner in her honor in the farmhouse near Oslo where the Israelis and Palestinians held their secret peace talks.

Another teenager, China's Chen Lu, won the bronze; considering that she is 17 and from a country where the international rules were unknown as recently as 1980, she showed authority and what her coach calls bing gan, a feeling for skating. Maybe the skating establishment should see whether China's homegrown code also has bing gan; it cannot be more Mandarin than the lofty formulas that are prevalent now in skating, and it might conceivably create fewer messes.

There were other high and low moments. Harding's sense of theater did not desert her. Shortly after taking the ice, she popped a jump and immediately confronted the judges with what appeared to be a ragged bootlace. Sure enough, they gave her a second chance -- it was reportedly the fourth time she had had to relace during a competition, a problem nearly unknown to other skaters. Also, she must return to Portland, Oregon, without having discovered "the gold" that she envisioned for her supporters. She must face a U.S.F.S.A. disciplinary hearing and a grand jury investigation into the Kerrigan attack.

Harding seemed to draw out the worst in some journalists. According to the Dallas Morning News, reporters for the Detroit Free Press, New York Times and San Jose Mercury News were caught by another journalist breaking into Harding's Olympic E-mail and directory, checking her list of messages. A spokesman said the U.S. Olympic Committee was satisfied that none of Harding's messages were read.

The major disappointment was France's Surya Bonaly, who ended in fourth place. Her mighty jumps gave a vitamin shot to the proceedings, but she tired and fell out of a leap or two near the end. As for Katarina Witt, the 1988 gold-medal winner, she placed seventh -- again, no thanks to the judges. She had suffered through months of jeering that she was returning to competition for frivolous reasons. But her long program was the best choreographed and most stylish of the contest. Unlike the jump-and-spin fests offered by most contestants, hers had varied pacing and intricate, pleasing footwork. She deserved better than the mediocre marks she received.

Aside from numerous falls -- almost a precondition of competition now that triple jumps are mandatory -- it was in general a well-skated event. And, if the public does not take its resentment of inscrutable scoring out on her, the sport may have a new idol in Baiul. Ballet fans who cross over to watch skating already adore her. They love her enormously expressive arms and the unusual flexibility of her back and hips. She is that rare athlete who is also an artist, without doubt the most musical skater to appear in a long time. Like the very best dancers -- say, Suzanne Farrell or Kyra Nichols -- she gives the impression that the melody flows from her body rather than that she ( is reacting to the music.

She has shot onto the scene like a comet. In her first ever international competition, she won last year's world championships in Prague. And this is, of course, her first Olympics. But her life must change. She came up the hard way. Her childhood will shortly be folklore: her father disappeared from Dnepropetrovsk when she was two; her mother died at 36 of cancer when Oksana was 13, leaving the child without blood relations to turn to. Her coach was the next to vanish -- emigrating to Canada to seek a better future than struggling Ukraine could offer. It was then that Zmievskaya took over.

In Odessa Baiul skates at a rink where the ice is often like spring mush. She shares a little room with her coach's younger daughter, her best friend. Her idol is Rudolf Nureyev, whose pictures adorn the walls. Zmievskaya says her prize pupil "doesn't know what a million dollars is. All she knows is that she needs 10 fantiki ((candy wrappers)) to buy an ice cream."

That phase of an already crowded life is definitively over. Crowds love Baiul, and she loves them. Anyone with something to sell will be just as smitten. In the past, Zmievskaya has turned aside suggestions that her extended family move to the comforts of the West because they lacked the money for training and living expenses. Now they will probably spend at least part of the year outside Ukraine.

Who knows how Baiul will handle her new celebrity? She dotes on a stuffed rabbit given to her by another idol, skater Jill Trenary. She is a fountain of emotion, weeping at good news or bad. Her American agent, Michael Rosenberg, is exultant at the gold. Asked about his strategy for his young client, he says, "I see her as the next Judy Garland." For the coming phase, Baiul will need all the determination that brought her so far so fast, because that statement is enough to make you weep.

With reporting by Susanna Schrobsdorff/Hamar