U.S. Olympic Festival : For Kyoko Ina, Home Ice Is in the United States

There is a new wave of American figure skaters here, young women who will form the post-Debi Thomas era of this personality-conscious sport. They have come to the U.S. Olympic Festival, having left the protective ranks of junior competition, to experience their first jolt of life in the senior ranks.

It is the official big time .

Among this new group--which includes Kristi Yamaguchi of Fremont, Calif., who was in first place after Saturday night’s original program, and Holly Cook of Bountiful, Utah, who was second--is an unlikely candidate for stardom. She is 16-year-old Kyoko Ina, of Englewood Cliffs, N.J. And she is a Japanese citizen.

Ina was born in Tokyo, but her family moved to New York when she was 6 months old. Three years ago, when her coaches and parents suggested that she compete internationally for Japan, Ina agreed.

“They said that it was better for my career because I would compete more and get out into the open,” she said. “I had to think about it at first. I didn’t want to just go and compete. And secondly, I didn’t know what skating would be like over there. I was more comfortable skating here. So, just to go to another country to compete didn’t feel right.

“Everything was different. I thought it was going to be like over here with media and spectators. But over there you go and compete. There’s nothing else. It’s very different.”

Ina can speak and understand Japanese, but she can’t read or write the language. And in two years of commuting to Japan for major competitions, lack of communication became a problem.

“I was considered an American,” Ina said. “The way the kids treated me, it didn’t matter that I was an American. But everyone else treated me like I was an outsider.”

Still, Ina thrived, if not in the cultural environment at least within her self-made skating cocoon. In 1987 she was the Japanese junior champion and placed eighth at the world junior championships.

Her success did little to mend the damaged relations with the Japanese federation. Rather than embracing this promising junior skater, Japanese officials approached Ina with a skeptical sternness that puzzled Ina and her coaches.

Part of the reaction, she guessed, was a reasonable resentment. “If someone came to your country and started winning everything, would you like it?” she said.

One of Ina’s coaches, Mary Lyn Gelderman, said there was some ill will toward Ina because her two coaches were American, and one was a woman.

“There was a lot of animosity over that,” she said. “They have a system where they want total control. We are not used to that. There was very little camaraderie between the federation and her coaches. I don’t think they ever thought Kyoko was going to go back to the United States, but they did resent her American coaches. The Japanese didn’t oversee her training, they had no control over her ice time and they didn’t like that. They are very strict with their skaters to the point of getting involved with their training.”

Relations with the Japanese federation grew so strained that they decided to change some ground rules. Ina had been allowed to fly in for major competitions only but, after a year, Japanese officials began to require that she also compete in regional and qualifying competitions. She was making the 20-hour trip to Tokyo several times a year.

Of that grueling time, Ina says: “I think they were trying to make me prove to them that I was better than I was. That I was a better person. They were trying to change how I am. “

Gelderman said that, after a time, she and Ina’s family began to understand that Kyoko might never fit in.

“Kyoko was Japanese by birth, but she’s American by upbringing,” Gelderman said. “She couldn’t change her way of thinking. I really think the problem was that we were bringing her up in an American society; she’s American. And we were making her compete in an alien situation. She was like a man without a country.”

Ina said she never formed friendships with other Japanese skaters. “I just never felt comfortable,” she said.

Finally, the strain brought emotions bubbling to the surface. Three days before Ina and Gelderman were scheduled to return to Japan for the national championships, Ina snapped.

One ragged practice session deteriorated into a shouting match.

“I said, ‘What do you want to be, do you want to be Japanese or do you want to be American?’ ” Gelderman said. “She said, ‘I don’t think there was ever any choice.’ I asked her if she was ready to change everything. I have never heard a young child quite so adamant.”

Ina’s flat assessment of her mental state at the time is delivered in a monotone: “I just couldn’t take it anymore.”

After she left Japan, Ina had to obtain a release from the federation to be allowed to compete internationally for the United States. That was, predictably, difficult.

“They didn’t want her, but they didn’t particularly want to give her back, either,” Gelderman said.

It took a year for the situation to get straightened out, and during that time Ina was not allowed to compete. When she finally began to skate again last summer, Ina was compelled to mount a barnstorming tour to reacquaint herself with U.S. judges.

“I was relieved,” she said. “But I had to compete every weekend for the whole summer, just to get back in there, to be seen. I felt more comfortable, I felt at home. I knew where I wanted to be. I felt more confident in myself.”

It worked. In February, Ina was the surprise winner of this year’s Junior National Championships, beating Jessica Mills, who was the reigning world junior champion.

If there was pressure in this, her first competition against senior skaters, Ina was not letting on. “I just want to have fun,” she said, sounding like other teen-agers, but not seeming like them.

In Friday night’s competition at Myriad Arena, Ina skated a strong but flawed program. Ina, perhaps one of the sport’s strongest jumpers, pulled out of one double jump late in the program. That cost her, as she finished ninth in this first section of the competition.

Was she worried?

“No way, I’m having a great time,” she said.

At last.