U.S. OLYMPIC FESTIVAL : Axel Becomes Tumble for Harding on Ice : Festival: Ambitious program ends in disaster, as does her bid to unseat Trenary as No. 1.

As she skated off the ice Sunday at the end of her Olympic Festival routine, Tonya Harding paused to pick up a flower that a fan had tossed in her direction.

In a symbolic twist, it had fallen out of its wrapper. The routine had unraveled much the same way.

Harding’s free-skating program, which started out to the theme from the movie, “Batman,” had several “Bash! Boom! Ka-pows!” But not by design.

The 19-year-old skater from Portland turned in a triple all right, just not the kind she was hoping for.

On an afternoon when she attempted to become the first American woman to complete a triple Axel in competition, Harding ended up doing a triple tumble on the Met Center ice.

It was not the kind of hat trick the sellout crowd of 13,973 was used to witnessing.

Harding recovered from the spills well enough to finish second behind Nancy Kerrigan. But what about that challenge to Jill Trenary’s reign as the top U.S. women’s skater?

Never mind .

Just nine months ago, Trenary’s perch at the top appeared to be tenuous. At last October’s Skate America competition in Indianapolis, Harding defeated Trenary, who was then a two-time national champion and a fourth-place finisher in the 1988 Olympics in Calgary.

There were many who thought Harding would make it official in February by taking away Trenary’s U.S. crown when the two met again in the National Championships.

But a week before the competition, Harding contracted an illness that eventually developed into pneumonia.

Doctors urged her to pull out of the event, but Harding refused.

“I would never have known where I would have come out,” she said.

As it was, Trenary won her third title easily, and Harding was a distant seventh. And in March, Trenary won in the World championships at Halifax, Canada.

Both women skated at the festival, but only Harding competed.

Trenary, whose next competition will be in four weeks at the Goodwill Games in Seattle, put on an exhibition Sunday night.

Harding watched. And plotted.

She has quit school and quit her job--”in the hardware department at Sears”--to concentrate on a return engagement in the nationals next February on the same ice where she left skid marks Sunday.

“Right now I feel that skating is my life and it’s all I have,” Harding said.

By the time she next meets Trenary in competition, Harding expects to have accomplished her first triple Axel, an exercise she routinely completes during practice.

Midori Ito is the only woman to complete the move in competition.

A November event on Ito’s own turf, in Japan, just might be the place for Harding to attempt it again. And when that triple is tried, it may be preceded by a quadruple toe loop, a move never accomplished by a woman in competition.

For now, Harding says she will work to perfect the routine she has--one she has practiced in its entirety for less than two weeks.

“Right now it’s hard because I still have to concentrate on what I’m supposed to do instead of just having it come naturally,” Harding said. “But I know it’s a good program for me. I picked the music out myself, and when I’m on, I skate great to it.”

Harding’s first fall Sunday, on the attempted triple Axel, came near the completion of the first of her routine’s three parts.

The second portion was to the song, “Send in the Clowns”. Smokey Robinson’s “Tears of a Clown” would have been more appropriate. She fell again while trying a triple flip.

And the last song?

Fittingly, it was “Wild Thing” by Tone Loc, in which she stumbled again during a triple salchow.

Kerrigan, the gold-medal winner from Stoneham, Mass., turned in precisely the kind of performance she needed to keep safe the lead she had earned during Saturday’s short program.

It was graceful but conservative. She wobbled after two of her four triple jumps but saved a fall both times by pushing herself up with a hand.

Kerrigan was fourth in the nationals, narrowly missing an invitation to the World Championships. Sunday marked her first victory in a seniors’ event.

This event was also the seniors’ debut of Nicole Bobeck, a 12-year-old from Chicago who, like Trenary, is coached by Carlo and Christa Fassi.

Bobeck finished seventh, but she was the only skater to bring the crowd to its feet.

It was a reaction that could have been caused solely by an aggressive succession and spins.

But the fact that she is 4-feet-10 and weighs 70 pounds also was certainly a factor.

“I was a little nervous being here with Nancy Kerrigan and everybody big,” said Bobeck, stretching her neck to reach the microphone during an interview session afterward.

“Then I could hear the crowd and I was really happy. It made me stronger at the end.”