Top-Rated Seybolds Feel Time Has Come for U.S. Skating Title

This is the moment for Natalie and Wayne Seybold. They intend to seize it--and their first U.S. Figure Skating Championships.

The Seybolds are the top-rated pair in the country. After 16 years of skating together and seven years on the national scene, the brother and sister from Marion, Ind., say they are ready for their biggest season.

“Right now, we’re the top-ranked team in the United States, and we want to come here and prove that and win a gold medal,” Wayne said. “We’ve been junior national champions, we’ve been on the world team, the Olympic team, we’ve been second, third, fourth, fifth and ninth at senior nationals. We’ve won international competitions and things, but the one thing that’s eluded us is the national championship. That’s what this year is all about.”

With Olympic bronze medalists Jill Watson and Peter Oppegard now professionals and their prospective successors, Gillian Wachsman and Todd Waggoner retired, the Seybolds are favored this week. They begin competition Wednesday night with the original program and finish Friday with their free skating program.

“What happens this year in Baltimore will affect what happens in the Olympic trials in 1992,” said Wayne, 25, two years older than his sister. “It’s just a fact, because you’ve got to have kids who are consistent, who are willing to train year after year and make their skating grow over the four-year period in order to have good representation at the Olympic Games.”

The United States had that at Calgary--Wachsman and Waggoner were fifth and the Seybolds 10th.

The toughest foes for the Seybolds probably will be Katy Keeley and Joe Mero, and the sensational teen-agers Kristi Yamaguchi and Rudi Galindo, who won the 1988 world junior crown.

Yamaguchi also has surged into the rankings in women’s singles. She will push 1987 American champion Jill Trenary, who was fourth at the Calgary Olympics.

Galindo will double up in singles but is not considered a challenger to Chris Bowman or Paul Wylie, who are rated even at the top of American men’s skating now that Olympic champion Brian Boitano has turned pro.