Ito Doesn’t Leave Foes Jumping for Joy : Figure skating: Her ability to execute triple axels puts exuberant Japanese among female elite.

Her dynamic performance in the 1988 Winter Olympics at Calgary, combined with the elimination of compulsory figures after 1990, made it inevitable that Japan’s Midori Ito some day would rule women’s figure skating.

Even U.S. champion Jill Trenary knew the best she could hope for before last year’s World Championships in Paris was that Ito’s rise would be gradual instead of immediate.

As the fourth-place finisher in Calgary behind three retiring medalists, Katarina Witt, Elizabeth Manley and Debi Thomas, Trenary was expected to inherit the title in Paris. Her expertise in figures, in contrast with Ito’s haphazard etchings, was supposed to be her edge.

But Ito, who was performing triple jumps as a 6-year-old in Japan, does nothing gradually. Trenary knew her cause was lost as soon as she saw her 4-foot-9, 97-pound rival on the ice. Trenary acknowledged this week that she was intimidated by Ito, which she said accounted, at least in part, for her flawed freestyle performances and a third-place finish.

“I was in awe,” said Trenary, who shared practice time with Ito. “I didn’t expect her to be as good as she was.”

Fortunately for Trenary, she was not assigned to Ito’s practice group for this year’s World Championships, which begin today for the women with compulsory figures. But she said it would not have made much difference if she had been. She came here expecting the worst, which means Ito’s best.

“I’ve accepted it,” Trenary said. “She’s very talented.”

Trenary’s coach, Carlo Fassi, said her only hope to beat Ito if both skate their best would be for the judges to reverse the trend of recent years in scoring and reward aesthetics instead of athleticism.

This will not be good news for Trenary, but Ito, 20, claimed at a news conference Monday night that she has improved artistically. Until now, her reputation has been based solely on her jumping ability, which she said came naturally.

“As a child, I felt I could master some of the jumps quicker than the other children,” she said through an interpreter. “Jumps that would take them three hours to learn took me an hour and a half.”

As an 11-year-old in the World Junior Championships, she completed three triple jumps. Last year, she became the first woman to perform the most difficult triple jump, the axel, in competition.

“Last year, the challenge was the triple axel,” she said. “Since I can do that now, this year I am trying to do more for artistic impression.”

To that end, she has been taking ballet lessons. Although her coach, Machiko Yamada, choreographed the freestyle program in the past, that duty fell this year to Ito’s ballet teacher.

But asked what it is about her skating that so excites crowds, she smiled and said, “Jumps.”

While other women--the United States’ Elaine Zayak, for example--have built their programs around jumps, it is only since Ito emerged that it seems to have become required in order to impress international judges. Skaters who have followed Ito’s lead include Californian Kristi Yamaguchi, second in the national championships to Trenary the last two years, and France’s Surya Bonaly.

Bonaly, 16, is a former gymnast who already is practicing quadruple jumps, which have been performed in a major competition by only one man, world champion Kurt Browning of Canada.

Christopher Bowman of Van Nuys, runner-up in last year’s world championships, compares Ito to Browning.

“Ito is fearless, and Kurt Browning has a lot of that quality,” he said. “If they thought they could climb up on top of the rafters and jump off with their skates on, do six revolutions and have a chance of surviving, they would do it.”

Critics of the trend, which they say was encouraged by the impending elimination of compulsory figures, fear it will increase the potential for injuries, particularly in young girls.

Ito suffered an injured left ankle on a triple jump last May and has to have it heavily taped before going onto the ice. She said her own experimentation with quadruple jumps will be postponed until her ankle improves.

For now, she is content to have seven triple jumps in her freestyle program. Her only problem in practice has been that the ice at the Halifax Metro Centre is barely large enough to contain her. On triple axels, she comes perilously close to crashing into the boards. Officials of the International Skating Union said the ice meets their minimum requirements but added that the increased emphasis on jumping might force them to revise their standards.

Born in Nagoya, a city of 2 million, Ito was accomplished enough by age 4 to skate to the center of the ice rink and ask Yamada to coach her. Two years later, after her parents separated, she moved in with Yamada’s family and has lived there since.

“At that time, she accepted me as one of her children,” Ito said. “So I didn’t feel that I was a hardship for her.”

Beyond that, Ito divulges few details of her personal life. Her parents still live in Nagoya, but she said she keeps in touch with them primarily by telephone. She said her father is a businessman. Asked what kind, she said, “A regular businessman.”

She recently graduated in home economics from a two-year school, Tokai Gakuen Girls College, and soon will begin work for a large Japanese company, Prince Hotels, although she said she has not yet been informed of her job’s requirements.

One of Japan’s most popular athletes--”I am not even able to go to the doughnut shop with my friends without being recognized”--she recently received the ultimate honor in her country, an invitation to visit Emperor Akihito in his palace.

She does not seem to have been affected by her fame. As exuberant as ever on the ice, Ito once was described as “a smile attached to wings.” After particularly difficult jumps, she pumps a fist in the air. That is not typical of Japanese athletes, who usually are stoic while competing, but her coach quit trying years ago to change her.

When it comes to discipline, however, she is very Japanese. After finishing sixth last year in figures, which account for 20% of the final score, she had to win both freestyle programs to become the champion. In an attempt to improve, she said she has spent two-thirds of her practice time this year on the tedious tracings. That does not mean she has acquired a love for them, but she puts her head down and carries on.

“Compulsories,” she said, “are compulsory.”