FIGURE SKATING / WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS : Ito Triple Jumps to Second Place but Can’t Catch Trenary

Japan’s Midori Ito proved again Saturday she is the best women’s freestyle figure skater in the world. She may be better than any of the men, too. But Jill Trenary, a three-time U.S. champion, did not react well to suggestions that the gold medal from the World Championships should belong to anyone but her.

“I won,” said Trenary, 21, of Minnetonka, Minn. “I got the gold medal. Obviously, people think Midori is the best freestyle skater, and she is. But considering everything, I won. That’s all I can say.”

It was a foregone conclusion entering Saturday’s freestyle programs at the Halifax Metro Centre that Ito, the defending champion, would win that phase of the competition, which accounts for 50% of the final score. And she did.

All Trenary, who was in third place in the overall standings when the day began, had to do to win the championship was finish second in the freestyle. And she did, becoming the fourth U.S. world champion since 1982.

Holly Cook of Bountiful, Utah, finished third and Kristi Yamaguchi of Fremont, Calif., was fourth. Never before has one country had three finishers among the top four skaters in the women’s freestyle competition.

But all three Americans combined could not land enough triple jumps to compete with the athleticism of Ito, who performed six triple jumps, including a triple axel with hang time Michael Jordan would have envied. No other woman has ever done a triple axel in competition.

Ito had the top score on all nine judges’ cards in the freestyle program and received perfect scores of 6.0 for technical merit from three of them.

About the only thing wrong with her performance, by her own admission, was that it was not as demanding as the one she did at last year’s World Championships in Paris, where she received five perfect scores. But she has improved stylistically, which has been her weakness.

She still cannot compete in that category with Trenary, who did what she had to do technically, landing four of five triple jumps without a mistake, and did it elegantly, receiving six 5.9s for artistic impression. Every judge had her second.

Ito, who skated earlier, left the arena in tears after watching Trenary, knowing her title chances were gone, but she did not begrudge the American.

“If I fall on my jumps, there is nothing,” she said. “Jill is doing something every moment.”

Except for Ito and Trenary, the quality of skating was not exceptional.

The most ambitious program belonged to Surya Bonaly, 16, the French champion who had eight triple jumps and a quadruple in her repertoire. The only person ever to land a quadruple in a major competition is men’s champion Kurt Browning of Canada.

Bonaly crashed on her attempt. She had one other fall, a slip and looked more like a gymnast. But the judges rewarded her potential with scores that gave her ninth place overall.

Cook’s program was not particularly enthralling as she performed only two clean triple jumps. But after starting the day in second, she finished third by default. At 19, she is the first U.S. woman to win a medal in her first World Championships since 1947.

Yamaguchi, 18, had a program with seven triple jumps, difficult enough that she could have won a medal if she had skated well. But she fell on her first two jumps. Because she regained her composure after the disastrous start, she still placed third in the freestyle program. But that left her in fourth overall.

Ito would have won the championship if she had finished ninth or higher instead of 10th in Wednesday’s compulsory figures, which count toward 20% of the final score.

Even though she won the original program Friday and the freestyle program, Ito could not climb out of that rut.

Trenary, who finished first in the figures and fifth in the original program, became the first champion since East Germany’s Anett Poetzsch in 1980 to win neither of the free skating phases.

Now that the compulsory figures have been eliminated, Trenary will have a difficult decision to make about whether to continue skating competitively through the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville, France, or sign a lucrative contract with an ice show.

If the figures were eliminated from this year’s standings, the first three, in order, would have been Ito, Yamaguchi and Trenary.

Her father, Bob Trenary, said they hope to make the decision soon.

“It’s not whether she can win the World Championship again next year, it’s whether she can be in front-running contention for a gold medal in Albertville,” he said. “If she’s got a 30 to 40% chance of winning, I think she’ll stick around.”

Can she beat Ito in a free skating competition?

“She’s tough, but no one is perfect all the time,” Trenary said. “She’ll fall in practice like we all do. It’s not like she’s a robot, which is good. I won’t make my decision based on one skater. It has to come from within, whether I can continue because I love skating.”