WORLD SPORTS SCENE / RANDY HARVEY : From Now On, Yamaguchi Will Have a Singular Purpose on Ice

When figure skater Kristi Yamaguchi broke into tears of disappointment after a fourth-place singles finish at the World Championships this winter in Halifax, Canada, it seemed only a matter of time before she would end a pairs partnership with Rudi Galindo that produced national senior championships in 1989 and 1990 and a world junior championship.

After all, she had said repeatedly that she would quit competing in both singles and pairs when it no longer was fun for her. She did not appear to be having fun in Halifax.

So no one was surprised when Yamaguchi told Galindo last week that she is going to put all of her time and energy into singles. Her fourth-place finish at the World Championships hardly shamed her, but she was dissatisfied because she was in position to win a bronze medal until she had difficulty with her freestyle program.

Her performance indicated that she was mentally tired after another grueling week, during which she and Galindo finished fifth in pairs. They also finished fifth in 1989.

“It was getting harder and harder for me to keep doing both,” she said in a statement this week from her home in Fremont, Calif. “I’m still going to miss pairs a lot. It’s like a whole chapter of my life ending. I just realized there is no way I can skate at the level I want by competing in both.”

Galindo, who is from San Jose, has resumed his singles career. He was the 1988 world junior champion before quitting to concentrate on pairs.

Although Yamaguchi’s decision leaves the United States without a defending champion in pairs, it appears as if the defending champion in women’s singles, Jill Trenary, will return.

After upsetting Japan’s Midori Ito for the world championship in Halifax, Trenary had to choose between continuing in amateur skating and cashing in by joining an ice show.

She hinted last week that she would skate competitively through 1992, saying that she would not know how to tell her grandchildren some day that she had a chance to win an Olympic medal and walked away from it.

Trenary, who is from Minnetonka, Minn., also announced that she will compete in this summer’s Goodwill Games. Ito may be there. Yamaguchi is definite. She finished second to Trenary in the 1989 and 1990 national championships.

After failing to win an Italian League soccer championship for 54 years, Napoli has won twice since Maradona joined the team in 1987. Napoli won its latest title Sunday, beating Lazio, 1-0, and finishing two points ahead of AC Milan in the final standings.

There were celebrations into the early hours Monday, but not only in Naples.

Neapolitans in Chicago covered their cars in blue and white--Napoli’s colors--and held a parade. On top of one car was a casket draped in red and black--AC Milan’s colors.

In Bensonhurst, a section of Brooklyn, Neapolitans marched down the street toward their favorite bar. In tow was a mule, Napoli’s mascot. But no amount of pushing and pulling could coax the stubborn animal into the bar.

Add Soccer: Other champions in European leagues are Liverpool in England, Real Madrid in Spain and Bayern Munich in West Germany. On the verge of clinching are Ajax of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, Olympic Marseilles in France, FC Bruges in Belgium and FC Porto in Portugal.

Ajax will play the U.S. national team May 12 in Washington.

The United States has two games scheduled before then, Saturday in Piscataway, N.J., against Malta and Wednesday in Hershey, Pa., against Poland.

David Vanole of Manhattan Beach, who was dismissed from the U.S. team in January in a contract dispute, is training with his former teammates again and could win a place on the 22-man World Cup roster as the third goalkeeper.

The U.S. under-20 team beat Costa Rica, 2-0, Sunday in Escuinita, Guatemala, in the first round of the North and Central America and Caribbean regional tournament to determine two qualifiers for the 1991 World Youth Championship. The United States plays Barbados today in Escuinita.

Austria, a first-round opponent of the United States in the World Cup, plays an exhibition in Vienna tonight against Argentina. Because Maradona’s season in Naples is finished, he could play with Argentina for the first time this year.

Both Czechoslovakian players who defected last year, Lubos Kubik and Ivo Knoflicek, were allowed to rejoin the national team in time for last week’s 4-2 exhibition loss to England. Kubik scored a goal.

Two-time Olympic champion Roger Kingdom will run outdoors for the first time this season in the 110-meter hurdles at the Jack-in-the-Box meet at UCLA May 20. Negotiations are continuing that would bring Olympic shotput champion Ulf Timmermann of East Germany to the meet to compete against Randy Barnes, the Olympic silver medalist.

Timmermann was elected by East German athletes as their representative to the country’s sports committee. Like most East German athletes, he is resigned to the inevitability of a unified German team. But he has said that the athletes do not want that to occur before the Olympics in 1992.

A higher power, East German Prime Minister Lothar de Maiziere, recently told his parliament that he favors one German team in 1992.

More Politics: The Soviet Union’s sports committee will allow athletes from the 15 republics to march behind their own flags in the opening ceremony at the Goodwill Games in Seattle July 20. That may not appease the Lithuanians, who want their own team after declaring independence.