Morning Briefing : Skating Debut Is Definitely No Smash

Cheufkai Lai of Hong Kong made history in the World Skating Championships at Tokyo, but don’t ask him about it.

Cheufkai, making his competitive debut in men’s singles, came up somewhat short in the compulsories, where a perfect score is 6.0. He was graded at 0.1.

Said the West German news agency, Deutsche Presse-Agentur: “It was the worst compulsory exercise ever seen in a top competition.”

The Hong Kong Ice Skating Assn. was admitted to the International Skating Union last September.

Said international president Jozef Dedic: “Apparently we were a little premature.”

The Name Game: If it’s colorful names you want, here’s your All-American basketball team: Abdur Rahiim Al Matiin of St. Louis, Anicet Lavodrama of Houston Baptist, Olden Polynice of Virginia, Quinzel Chestnut of Georgia Southern, and Napoleon Lightning of St. Francis of Pennsylvania.

Add Polynice: A native of Haiti, Olden has a brother named Widmark.

According to Ray Hall of the Louisville Courier-Journal, the parents of the Polynices named their sons for their favorite actors, William Holden and Richard Widmark. In keeping with the Haitian practice of not pronouncing H’s, Holden became Olden.

Emphasizing how low USC sank last year, Coach Stan Morrison told Nick Bertram of the Portland Oregonian: “We finished 11-20. We were getting ripped on the 16th page of every sports section that had 16 pages.”

Arizona guard Brock Brunkhorst, on the difficulty of playing against Stanford: “It’s hard playing against all those bounce passes. It makes your rear end sore from having to crouch so much.”

Says Fred Lynn of the Baltimore Orioles: “It feels good to be with an organization that emphasizes defense and pitching. I’ve always been with teams with sluggers. If they didn’t slug, we didn’t win.”

That, of course, was precisely the problem--Lynn didn’t slug enough. The Angels couldn’t see how his average of 80 runs batted in over the past three seasons translated into a salary of $1 million-plus.

Harvey Haddix, released as pitching coach of the Pittsburgh Pirates, has returned to his farm in South Vienna, Ohio.

Says Haddix, who pitched for St. Louis, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh and Baltimore, and coached for the New York Mets, Cincinnati, Boston, Cleveland and Pittsburgh: “I never quit a job. I was always fired.”

From John McGrath of the Denver Post, on a proposal to put a convertible roof on Mile High Stadium through the use of an air membrane cover: “I don’t know about you, but to me it’s just not a real ballyard if I can’t gaze up after the national anthem and drink in the ambiance of an old-fashioned, honest-to-goodness air membrane cover.”

A street near Western Hills High School in Cincinnati, where Pete Rose went to school, has been renamed Pete Rose Drive.

San Francisco 49er linebacker Jack (Hacksaw) Reynolds, who attended the same school, was asked if they’ve named anything after him.

“Yeah, probably the men’s room,” he said.

Quotebook

Jeff Jordan, Omaha Press Club emcee, on Nebraska Coach Tom Osborne’s double coronary bypass: “Isn’t that just like Osborne? They send him in for a single bypass, and he decides to go for two.”