Yamaguchi Pushes Pedal to Close In on Medals

Carole Yamaguchi remembers asking her daughter when she was 6 years old why she wanted to skate.

“Mother,” Kristi Yamaguchi said, “to win medals.”

Twelve years, one world junior championship in both pairs and singles and a national senior championship in pairs later, Yamaguchi, from Fremont, Calif., apparently still does not have enough medals because she is skating with more exuberance than ever.

Twenty-four hours after she and partner Rudi Galindo of San Jose won the original program to assume first place in pairs at the national figure skating championships, Yamaguchi returned to the Salt Palace Thursday night to win the singles’ original program.

That put in third place overall behind defending champion Jill Trenary of Minnetonka, Minn., and Tonya Harding of Portland, Ore. If Yamaguchi wins Saturday’s freestyle program, which she did last year when she was second in the final standings to Trenary, she will be the national champion.

If she also retains the pairs title, which she and Galindo are expected to do in tonight’s freestyle program, Yamaguchi would be the first woman since Joan Touzzer in 1950 to win national championships in both events in the same year.

Asked whether she has pondered such an achievement, Yamaguchi, who is quiet around her family and friends and almost catatonic around the media, said: “I really haven’t thought about it.”

Her coach, Christy Kjarsgaard Ness, said that was probably true.

“When she won both world junior titles in the same year in 1988, we didn’t think about it,” she said. “It’s not something you really concentrate on. I know it’s a possibility, and so does she.

“But it’s not a pressure thing to her. She doesn’t say, ‘God, I’ve got to win both titles.’ ”

If any of the contenders seemed to feel the pressure Thursday night, it was the most experienced one, Trenary, a two-time champion and bronze medalist in last year’s World Championships. She was the only one of the top 14 skaters to fall, mistiming her takeoff on a required double axel.

Trenary, 21, still received high marks for presentation, enabling her to finish third in the original program and retain the overall lead that she had after Wednesday’s compulsory figures.

She knows, however, that she has to skate more aggressively in the freestyle program than she did last year, when she finished a cautious third behind Yamaguchi and Harding but had enough of an advantage after the first two phases to win the championship.

If she expects to defend her title, she can’t lose Saturday to either Yamaguchi or Harding, 19, who finished second in the original program despite suffering from the flu. It will not be easy for Trenary. Yamaguchi has seven triple jumps planned for her freestyle program, and Harding will try to become the first U.S. woman to perform a triple axel in competition.

“I knew I could finish second or third last year and win,” Trenary said. “This gives me more of an ‘I have to skate well’ feeling. I like that.”

In Thursday night’s dance original set pattern, defending champions Susan Wynne and Joseph Druar retained their lead over second-place April Sargent and Russ Witherby and third-place Suzanne Semanick and Ron Kravette.