Bowman Skates Facing New Career Direction

During practice sessions for the Skate America competition this week in Buffalo, N.Y., Christopher Bowman expects to be confronted with a moment of indecision. Should he skate to the sideboards to seek advice from Frank Carroll, his coach of 17 years, or from Toller Cranston, who has been coaching Bowman for little more than a month?

“It’s going to be bizarre in the warm-ups,” Bowman said last week. “I’ll go into overdrive and then forget which coach to go over to.”

If he makes the wrong choice, Carroll no doubt will remind him. He never has been shy about telling Bowman anything.

In September, Bowman ended a professional relationship that began at the Pickwick Ice Arena in Burbank when he was 6 years old. By almost anyone else’s standards, the partnership was successful.

Bowman, from Van Nuys, earned a place on the U.S. Olympic team for the 1988 Winter Games, won the national championship in 1989 and, in that same year, finished second at the World Championships.

But Carroll, who formerly coached Olympic silver medalist Linda Fratianne, often complained that Bowman would not reach his potential until his work habits improved. They had a falling out at last winter’s World Championships, where Bowman won the bronze medal. Their last competition together was last summer’s Goodwill Games, where a winded Bowman finished sixth.

They decided that Bowman needed a change, which led him to Toronto and Cranston, the 1976 Olympic bronze medalist for Canada. Their initial test together will begin Thursday at Skate America, one of the first international competitions of the new season.

It should be among the best competitions of the season.

“Frank and I will always be friends,” Bowman said. “He’s been like a third parent to me. We love each other, and, at the same time, we hate each other.

“It’s like having to work for your father. You love him to death, but the business isn’t going right and tension builds up in the house first. One of you has to pull back. It’s hard.”

Bowman has been working out three times a day in Toronto. He spends much of his practice time with Ellen Burka, who had a reputation as a taskmaster when she coached Cranston.

“He’s been trying hard,” Burka said. “I make him go through his programs, but I can’t change a 23-year-old established male skater as far as the way he works (is concerned). He works his own way, and he thinks he’s working very hard right now.”