Ice Capades Offer Yablon Chance to Display Athleticism to Public

Turning professional in most sports is usually a step up in status. Not so for figure skaters. Figure skaters don’t play in a league or get drafted by a team. They join the Ice Capades and immediately get banished from the sports world. Branded as performers , they lose their identity as athletes and get lumped in the same show-business category as circus clowns, trained seals and opera singers.

“That’s not fair,” says Karen Yablon, 23.

A member of the Ice Capades for 5 years, Yablon considers herself no less athletic than Bo Jackson. Certainly, she still needs the same moves, concentration and skills that were required when she competed. And the pressure, intensity, preparation, injuries and sweat haven’t disappeared just because she skates to entertain an audience rather than to impress a panel of judges.

“I consider myself an athlete,” says Yablon, a 1983 graduate of El Camino Real High. “In some ways, the Ice Capades is harder than competition. Especially when we do a lot of shows and the crowds aren’t big. It’s not easy keeping your motivation and attitude up. You have to concentrate all the time and not just put it on automatic pilot.”

And just because nobody gets a trophy or a gold medal, she says, “You still look to win the respect of the audience.”

The other night at the Forum, after Yablon finished her second 2-hour show of the day, she looked as if she’d just run a marathon. Long blonde hair wet from perspiration, she stood outside a dressing room--called a locker room in sports--wearing a robe and skates. Her eyelids drooped over her green eyes and her back muscles ached as usual. But she was enjoying the satisfying buzz that comes from making all the right moves on the ice.

“I had a good show,” says Yablon, who was skating professionally for the first time in Los Angeles. “When I have a bad one, I go home mad.”

It’s hard to visualize Yablon as someone who throws furniture and tantrums when she gets angry. Sitting pool side at her parents’ Woodland Hills home, she looks as mellow as melting ice. But at the arena, Yablon sheds her low-key, soft-spoken persona and becomes a whirling ballerina on blades, joining about 3 dozen other skaters in precision acrobatic routines.

In Broadway terms, Yablon is in the chorus line, where teamwork counts as much as in any sport. The chorus takes part in long, grueling production numbers, often burdened with cumbersome costumes, such as 12-foot chess pieces and gigantic butterfly wings. The chorus is on the ice most of the show, except when the star takes a turn. In this case, it’s Canadian Elizabeth Manley, who hasn’t been seen in the sports world since she went from Olympic darling (she won the silver medal in Calgary) to Ice Capades headliner.

Somewhere in the audience that night, a small girl may have been inspired by Manley’s performance and went home dreaming about the Ice Capades. Something like that happened to Yablon. She was 11 when she saw Peggy Fleming in the Ice Capades. From then on, “I dreamed about being in the show,” Yablon says.

Until Fleming provided her a goal, Yablon was skating just for fun. At 10, she and a friend were driven to Topanga Plaza, 5 minutes from their neighborhood, and went ice skating for the first time. Yablon came home excited and asked her parents for lessons. When they discovered that lessons began at 5 a.m., they gave her an alarm clock and Yablon was responsible for getting up on time.

“My parents never pushed me into it,” she says. “A lot of my friends whose parents pushed them into skating don’t even skate anymore.”

Although Yablon competed for 7 years and “always placed” in area meets, she didn’t go to national tournaments or aspire to skate in the Olympics. “People who do those things are pushed to go farther and farther,” she says. “I never was.” Besides, the Ice Capades were always right in front of her.

The big moment came in 12th grade. Yablon auditioned along with 13 or 14 other girls. Only 2 made it, and she was one of them. That was October, 1983.

Her elation began to fade when a contract didn’t come in the mail. The audition turned out to be more of a talent hunt to find potential skaters, with no guarantee of immediate employment. So Yablon enrolled at Pierce College and continued a social life that had been nonexistent until her senior year in high school. She said it was good for her to get away from the demands of skating.

“I needed a normal life,” she says. “I had never done much else other than skate. I wanted to be a cheerleader in high school but then I wanted to spend that time skating.”

The Ice Capades went out of focus for Yablon until she happened to see “Flashdance” in February of 1984. There’s a part in the movie when Jennifer Beals, playing an aspiring dancer, says the line: “If you give up your dream, you die.” That knocked Yablon to her senses.

“The next day, I called the Ice Capades,” she says. The call showed them that Yablon was serious. In April, she was sent a contract.

“You’ve got to go for it,” she says. “Things are not going to come to you.”

That July, she joined the Continental company of the Ice Capades at its training site in Bakersfield. “We trained 8 hours a day for 2 1/2 weeks,” she says. “That’s more than I ever did for competition.”

And then she was set to make her professional debut. Yablon remembers stepping off the bus at the arena in Sacramento, visions of show biz flashing through her mind . . . and breaking her ankle. “I was out for 2 1/2 months,” she says, blanching now at the mishap. “It’s soooooo embarrassing.”

Buses aside, Yablon has enjoyed a good run as a member of the Ice Capades, visiting 45 states “and enjoying the Gypsy life,” she says. “I don’t like to stay in one place too long.” On the road, Yablon has to pay her own hotel and food bills. She won’t say how much she makes for 9 months of work a a year, but promises “I’d skate even if I didn’t get paid.”

Yablon calls the Ice Capades “one big happy family,” but she’s closer to her own. When she’s out of town, she keeps in touch with her parents, 2 sisters and twin brother David, phoning every other day. She says she has a psychic communion with her twin.

“Our birthdays have not been the same since I’ve been on the road,” she says. “Without him there I just don’t feel whole.”

David, a tennis pro at Warner Center, used to get more nervous than his sister when he watched her perform. But he did reap benefits from Yablon’s involvement in skating. “She set me up with a lot of her skating friends,” he says.

Although Yablon thinks she can continue skating professionally for another 10 years, she’s not sure she wants to. “I don’t know if I’m going to continue after this year,” she says. “I’d like to start a new life,” perhaps teaching skating or modeling.

“But whatever I do,” she says, “I’ll never quit skating.”