National Figure Skating Championships : Debi Thomas, Boitano Win Titles

Debi Thomas dethroned Tiffany Chin and became the United States’ first black individual figure-skating champion Saturday, and defending men’s titlist Brian Boitano repeated easily after his chief challenger dropped out with an injury.

Christopher Bowman, 18, of Van Nuys, Calif., who was second to Boitano after the first two rounds of competition, has been suffering from a stress injury in his right leg. He had trouble with his short program and announced he was withdrawing before the long-program finale. It is expected that the U.S. Figure Skating Assn. will grant him an exemption and place him on the team going to the world championships next month at Geneva, Switzerland.

Usually, the three national medalists in each division go on to the world competition.

Boitano hit four triple jumps and failed to complete a fifth, but he easily took the gold with 2.0 factored places. Scott Williams, 20, of Redondo Beach, Calif., took the silver with 4.6, and Daniel Doran, 19, of Colorado Springs, Colo., who hit six triple jumps, won the bronze.

Thomas, 18, a freshman pre-med major at Stanford, dazzled the judges and the Nassau Coliseum crowd of 7,235 with an aggressive, athletic program in which she landed five triple jumps.

In contrast, silver medalist Caryn Kadavy, 18, of Colorado Springs landed three triple jumps, missed a fourth and substituted a double for a fifth. Chin, coming off a six-month layoff to correct a leg muscle imbalance, performed only two triples.

“I guess it’s a big accomplishment,” said Thomas, 18, of her status as first black skating champion. “But it’s also a coincidence. I never thought of that too much. . . . Winning today is kind of like finding the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow--except the rainbow was a bumpy road instead.”

The road had been particularly bumpy during her week of tight competition with Kadavy and Chin.

Thomas is still struggling to find a perfect balance between skating and studies. She took a two-month layoff last fall to catch up at school, and her practices last week were inconsistent.

Earlier in the day, Colette Huber, 20, of Los Angeles, and Ron Kravette, 22, of Costa Mesa, Calif., won the junior ice-dancing championship.