The Boitano Barricade : Is Christopher Bowman Good Enough Now, or Will He Have to Wait His Turn?

In the year before the 1984 Winter Olympics, Brian Boitano finished second to Scott Hamilton in the United States’ national figure skating championships and seventh in the world championships. Four years later, one year before the 1988 Winter Olympics, Christopher Bowman of Van Nuys finished second to Boitano in the national championships and seventh in the world championships.

Yet, despite his success in 1983, Boitano said that the months preceding the Olympics were so frustrating for him that he wondered whether he should continue in the sport. After last year’s world championships, Bowman did quit for five months, returning to the ice in September, just in time to prepare for this week’s national championships.

“It was the worst year for me emotionally,” Boitano said after a practice at McNichols Arena. “I had come in on the world scene in 1983 and done the best of my life. I was the first person to do every triple in a world championship.

“But when I came back in 1984, it was like I couldn’t win because Scott was still there. So I hoped to be second again in nationals, and I figured I couldn’t get much higher than seventh in the Olympics. It was hard to keep working toward something when you know you might be doing it in vain.”

Boitano, who is from Sunnyvale, Calif., again finished second to Hamilton at the 1984 national championships, but he finished fifth, higher than expected, at the Olympics and since has been one of the world’s premier skaters. He is virtually certain of winning his fourth straight national championship here and will go to the Winter Olympics next month in Calgary, Canada, as one of the gold-medal favorites.

But success has not obscured the memories of an apprenticeship served while waiting for Hamilton to retire. More than anyone else, Boitano, 24, can empathize with Bowman, 20.

“Definitely, there is a parallel,” Boitano said. “The difference is that I was secluded from everyone, and no one knew my problems. I was in San Francisco, where nobody could even come into the rink. He’s in L.A., where all the gossip is. Everybody’s aware what’s up with him.”

What is up with Bowman?

He laughed when some of the gossip was repeated to him this week.

“About 98% of it is false,” he said.

But he said he did quit training, he did gain weight, and he did create doubt in the minds of his coach, Frank Carroll of the Los Angeles Figure Skating Club, his family and his friends about whether he would ever reach his enormous potential as a skater. Part of Bowman’s problem was physical. He had ligament damage in his right ankle. But, for the most part, it was mental.

“I can understand 100% what Brian went through with Scott because I’ve been going through the same thing,” Bowman said. “You’re so close to your goal but yet so far. It’s hard to understand when you’re putting out that much effort, giving it 100% and going the extra mile, that it just doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t.

“It’s scary because I could step out onto that ice at the Olympics and light my hair on fire, and no one would notice because they want to see Brian Boitano and (Canada’s) Brian Orser and (the Soviet Union’s) Alexander Fadeev.”

But there was more to it than that. A former child actor who appeared on television for the first time when he was 6 months old and a figure skater since he was 4, Bowman was tired of performing.

“I got to the point where I didn’t want that any more, trying to be Mr. Congeniality, Mr. Howdy Doody,” he said. “It was like I was always saying, ‘Look at me, look at me, with the light bulb on my head, dancing around.’ I was sick of it. Emotionally, I said to hell with it.”

Within days, it seemed as if everyone in Los Angeles’ figure skating community was talking about Bowman.

“People are used to me doing everything by the book, doing the training just perfect, doing the programs just perfect, looking just perfect, hitting every nail right on top of the head,” he said. “You skate for 16 years, you do your best, and they’re very pleased with you. But then you make one mistake and everybody panics.

“You’re so expendable. That absolutely ate me up. You make one mistake, and you’re history. They say, ‘You’re history. We don’t need you. There’s plenty of people we can put in your place.’ And it’s very true. Absolutely, they can.”

Carroll said he was not surprised that Bowman needed a break, that it might have even been good for him to reflect and decide whether he wanted to continue devoting his life to the sport. Five months later, Bowman decided that he did and returned to Carroll at Burbank’s Pickwick Arena.

“It’s hard to say why,” Bowman said. “Basically, it came down to the realization that skating has been very, very good to me. I realized that as long as I went out there to be the best I could that I was going to be happy and not worry as much about what other people thought.

“You can’t control people or circumstances. But you can certainly control how you react to them. That’s where I had lost control and had to regain it.”

Now he has returned to his place in line, behind Boitano but ahead of all the other Americans.

“It’s like hurry up and wait your turn,” he said. “It’s difficult, but everybody else had to go through it. I’m going to have to go through it. Everything falls into place.”

Everything was falling into place for Bowman. Since returning, he has won two international competitions: one in Frankfurt, West Germany and one in Kushiro, Japan.

But three weeks before coming here, Bowman sprained his left ankle during practice and is still not able to complete all the jumps in his programs. If he does not finish among the top three here, U.S. Figure Skating Assn. officials could still select him for the Olympic team. But Joan Gruber, international committee chairman, said Tuesday that he would not be considered because he was not a medalist in last year’s World Championships.

As far as Bowman is concerned, that is fair.

He was named to the world championship team in 1986 after he injured his right leg during the short program of that year’s national championships. Even though the injury later was discovered to be a stress fracture, preventing him from competing in the world championships, he said he wishes he had not withdrawn at nationals, particularly after Boitano continued to compete with a painful foot injury.

“I wish I had not been persuaded to take an easier way out,” he said. “I really admire Brian for going after it. I feel I had the opportunity to follow him while he was doing that, and I did not do it. I regret it now.”

As a result, Bowman said he would not feel right about accepting a place on the Olympic team if he does not earn it on the ice.

“I have to do my job,” he said. “These are the cards I’ve been dealt. I have to play them out. I came to the nationals to do the very best I can. If I do that and finish last, I will be ecstatic. I would feel a lot better that way than if I fall all over the ice and they still give me a spot on the team.”

Besides, there is always next year, when Boitano will be retired from competitive skating?

Or will he?

Skating Notes

The men’s competition begins today at the South Suburban Ice Center with the compulsory figures. . . . After Monday night’s compulsory dances, defending dance champions Scott Gregory and Suzanne Semanick are leading. Gregory showed no effects of a herniated disk he suffered in November. “To think that a month ago Scott was flat on his back, it’s a medical miracle,” Semanick said. . . . One reason that Boitano has eliminated the quadruple jump from his program is a new rule that requires judges to deduct either .1 or .2 from a skater’s score if he falls. Before the new rule went into effect, Boitano attempted four times to become the first person to complete a quadruple jump in competition. He said he will try again at the world championships in Budapest, Hungary, one month after the Olympics.