World Figure Skating Championships : Soviet Couple Wins 4th Title; Witt, Boitano Lead

Soviet ice dancers Natalia Bestemianova and Andrei Bukin capped their brilliant amateur career with a fourth world title Thursday in the World Figure Skating Championships.

Another Soviet couple, Marina Klimova and Sergei Ponomarenko, earned the silver medal, while Canadians Tracy Wilson and Rob McCall took the bronze--the same order in which they finished in last month’s Winter Olympics.

Bestemianova, 28, and Bukin, 29, once again demonstrated their versatility, skating as smoothly to the violins and clashing cymbals of Borodin’s opera, “Prince Igor,” as they have to show tunes.

Earlier Thursday, Katarina Witt and Brian Boitano moved into position to repeat their Calgary victories.

In the men’s competition, Boitano surged ahead with a dynamic and imaginative short program--and a bit of unexpected help.

One key opponent, Soviet Alexander Fadeev, dropped out with a groin injury, while Boitano’s other chief rivals--Brian Orser and Grzegorz Filipowski--all made mistakes during their programs.

Witt, of East Germany, took the lead after the women’s compulsory figures.

“This is the first time that I have really enjoyed the figures, not only because I was winning but because it was the last (of my amateur career),” Witt said. She edged Canadian Liz Manley and U.S. rival Debi Thomas in the discipline that counts for 30% of the total score.

The last time the 22-year-old Witt had finished first in a world compulsory figures competition was 1984, and she has been struggling with them ever since.

Afterward, Witt made a big show of hanging on the wall the skates she has used to trace variations of the figure 8.

Thomas, 20, of San Jose, who was beaten in the Olympics by Witt and Manley, made no effort to hide her disappointment.

“I’m a nervous wreck,” she said after placing fourth in the last of three figures, following two mediocre third-place finishes. “I just kind of want to get this over with now . . . I want to go home.”

Meanwhile, Boitano, was elated.

“It was one of the best short programs of my life,” he said.

Third after the school figures, Boitano executed a near-perfect series of the seven required moves, including the night’s highest death drop and a breathtaking triple axel-double loop combination.

Skating to Meyrbeer’s “Les Patineurs,” the 24-year-old Olympic champion from Sunnyvale, Calif., also displayed his new-found artistic side with a charming portrait of a 19th-Century lad showing off on an icy pond for the townspeople.

In second place, despite a stumble on the jump combination, was Filipowski. The Pole was second to Fadeev after the compulsories.

Orser, the Canadian who was expected to be Boitano’s chief rival for the gold after leaving Calgary with a silver, touched down twice on his triple-double jump combination in an otherwise clean program.

But thanks to a continuous series of errors by other top competitors, he finished second in the short program and moved into third place overall after a fifth place in the compulsories.