Boitano Fails on Maneuver but Wins Title

The most anticipated jump of the day took place not in Seattle, where Michael Jordan won the National Basketball Assn. slam-dunk contest but a few miles down Interstate 5 in the Tacoma Dome.

At the U.S. figure skating championships Saturday night, Brian Boitano attempted to become the first person ever to complete a quadruple jump.

“You either hit it or land on your butt,” he said last week.

Boitano did neither.

To prevent a fall, he balanced himself with his right hand at the end of the fourth revolution.

Close, but no quad.

“I was a little too far forward, and I had to put my hand down,” said Boitano, who successfully completed the quadruple toe-loop in his warmup.

He said he will try again at the world championships, March 9-14, in Cincinnati, where he will attempt to defend the title he won last year.

Even though Boitano, 23, failed to do the quadruple, he hit six of the seven triple jumps he planned to easily win the long program.

In the overall standings, Boitano, who is from Sunnyvale, Calif., finished first, while Christopher Bowman of Van Nuys finished second and Scott Williams of Redondo Beach finished third. Bowman and Williams also earned berths in the world championships.

This was Boitano’s third straight national championship since Olympic champion Scott Hamilton retired in 1984.

While Hamilton was an artist, performing more traditional moves flawlessly, Boitano is more daring, adding to his repertory even as the world champion.

“People like to see the men compete athletically, going higher, faster,” said his coach, Linda Leaver.

Going higher faster than anyone else is nothing new for Boitano.

In 1982, he became the first American man to do a triple axel at the nationals. One year later, he became the first ever to complete all six triple jumps in the same program at the nationals, and he later duplicated the feat at the world championships.

In contrast, Hamilton did only two triple jumps in winning the 1984 Olympics.

Boitano’s program Saturday night included seven triple jumps, including the most difficult of them all, the triple axel, near the opening.

That would have been one of the most demanding programs ever performed without the attempt at the quadruple.

There have been four other such attempts, the Soviet Union’s Alexander Fadeev coming the closest at the 1984 Olympics. But his free leg grazed the ice on his one-footed landing.

Fadeev, whose jumping ability may equal Boitano’s, completed seven triple jumps, including four in combinations, last Thursday night at the European championships in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia. He was awarded three perfect scores of 6.0.

The 1985 world champion, Fadeev is expected to be Boitano’s closest challenger next month in Cincinnati.

Czechoslovakia’s Jozef Sabovcik, who won’t be in Cincinnati because of an injury, almost had the quadruple at last year’s European championships but landed on both feet.

“The top four or five men are capable of it, but maybe not in the context of a program,” Leaver said.

Leaver said she began planning 10 years ago for the day when Boitano would do the quadruple.

“I guessed at that time he would have to have it for the ’88 Olympics,” she said. “He first started trying it in practices in 1983. He would go to competitions after that and try it in warmups so he could practice it in front of people.”

Boitano had tried it once in competition before Saturday night, falling on his axel last year at Skate America.

After severely injuring his ankle during a quadruple in practice before last year’s nationals, requiring acupuncture in order to compete, he has decreased his attempts while training from 10 a day to three.

In the weeks leading to this competition, he said he was completing more than 90% of his attempts. But he said that since he arrived in Tacoma, he has hit only one of three in practices.

He admitted he was nervous.

But he said his confidence was bolstered in the short program Friday night, when he completed one of the most difficult combinations, a triple axel-double toe.

Only three others have ever included that combination in their short programs, but Boitano said he wanted to increase the difficulty of his short program over last year, when he did a triple lutz.

“A triple lutz would have been ho-hum for me,” he said. “I needed to take another step and really challenge myself.

“I knew a lot of other men would be doing the triple lutz this year. I didn’t want to lag behind as the champion.”

That also was his explanation for attempting the quadruple in his long program.

“I decided to take more chances this year than I ever did in any year in my life,” he said.

“I have a lot to give the sport. I’m not going to be happy if I rest on my laurels.”