GOODWILL GAMES : Bowman, Playing It Safe, Finishes Sixth; Browning Wins Gold Medal

It is said that he could be figure skating’s king. Instead, Christopher Bowman seems to prefer playing the court jester.

Faced with a choice of doing it straight or improvising, the 1989 U.S. men’s champion often makes like Robin Williams. In skating and in life.

In sixth place after the short program at the Goodwill Games, Bowman’s intentions going into Friday night’s free skating program were anybody’s guess.

Earlier in the week, he said he might be tempted--again--to abandon his usual routine and ad-lib a bit.

Would he be, as he once proclaimed, “Hans Brinker from hell”, or settle for Bowman the Showman?

As it turned out, neither. He deviated from his plans some, but not entirely by design.

A triple axel and a triple salchow both became singles. But only out of necessity.

Having trained for less than a month, Bowman, 23, was out of shape and playing it safe. His caution was very out of character.

“I’ve been somewhat of a glass house lately, wondering when the stones were going to come down,” Bowman said.

There were cracks showing after Thursday night’s short program, but Bowman recovered some with Friday’s fairly stylish free-skating routine.

“I was really scared I was going to walk away from this event sad and not learning anything,” Bowman said. “I turned it into something positive.”

Bowman, from Van Nuys, finished sixth among eight skaters. Canada’s Kurt Browning, two-time world champion, won the gold medal, with Viktor Petrenko of the Soviet Union taking silver and U.S. champion Todd Eldredge placing third for the bronze.

Eldredge was in fifth place after Thursday’s original program.

Bowman failed to move up, but he stuck with his program.

Faced with a similar situation in March at the World Championships in Halifax, Canada, he was full of surprises.

In fifth place after the short program, Bowman had a change of plans halfway through his free-skating exercise. He decided the routine that he, his coach and a handful of other advisers had worked on for months wasn’t quite difficult enough. It needed a touch more pizazz.

So, after considering his options for a few mili-seconds, Bowman did what any true showman would do. He made the rest of it up on the fly.

His daring paid off. He jumped two places in the standings and won a bronze medal.

Frank Carroll has been Bowman’s coach for 18 years, but their relationship has been on thin ice since Bowman free-lanced his way through the World Championships. Maybe before.

“There is one crazy person in the sport,” Carroll once lamented during a light-hearted moment, “why is it I have to be the one who coaches him?”

Carroll’s comments after the World Championships carried a more serious tone.

“If I am going to remain Christopher’s friend, I cannot be his coach,” Carroll said privately.

Carroll was still with Bowman this week, but seemed none to pleased about it. He declined interview requests all week, telling a spokesman he was “tired of lying and covering” for Bowman and that he had “nothing positive to say.”

Carroll, whose list of strait-laced proteges includes Linda Fratianne, seems to have tired of Bowman’s antics.

As the story goes, when Bowman, a cherubic 5-year-old, used to act up in Carroll’s class at Van Nuys Iceland, the coach simply picked him up and tossed him in a waste basket to show him who was boss. It’s not so simple now.

Bowman and Carroll clashed before the Goodwill Games. Bowman wanted to come. Carroll didn’t. “He was very reluctant about coming to this event because he felt they if you’re not totally prepared than you shouldn’t be going,” Bowman said.

In pairs skating, Ekaterina Gordeeva and Sergei Grinkov led a medals sweep by the Soviets. Todd Sand and Natasha Kuchiki, the United States’ top-ranked team, was fourth.

The Soviets also swept the ice-dancing competition, with Sergei Ponomarenko and Marina Klimova winning the gold medal.