Competition Is Hotter Than Usual, as Well : Figure skating: The national championships and Olympic berths will be decided in Orlando.

The U.S. Figure Skating Assn. wised up and awarded its National Championships to the Sun Belt after all those winters in refrigerated cities such as Denver, Salt Lake City and Minneapolis, where the snow, ice and subzero windchill-factored temperatures were largely for effect considering this is an indoor sport.

So far, the only confusion it has caused is among some of the well-heeled coaches, judges and mothers who didn’t know whether to bring their mink coats, but, as a concept, the USFSA is willing to give it a chance because next year’s nationals are scheduled for Phoenix.

This year’s nationals at the Orlando Arena are more significant than most because they will determine the skaters who will represent the United States in the Winter Olympics next month at Albertville, France.

Competition began Tuesday night with the dance compulsories, which, as the cliche goes, are as dull as watching paint dry. But louder. Each of 15 teams, according to the rules, performed routines to the exact same music, the Viennese Waltz and Tango Romantica, which are beautiful but tedious after the first dozen times.

The 5,831 spectators, however, were rewarded with an inspired performance by April Sargent-Thomas of Ogdensburg, N.Y., who competed only 17 days after undergoing emergency surgery for a ruptured cyst.

“Her doctor told her she needed at least two weeks of complete bed rest, but he didn’t know what kind of athlete she was,” said her coach, Robbie Kaine. “She knew she could do it.”

She and her partner, Russ Witherby of Cincinnati, finished the first phase of the competition in a first-place tie with Rachel Mayer and Peter Breen, who train at Colorado Springs, Colo.

With the pairs competition starting tonight--men’s and women’s singles begin Friday--the defending champions, Natasha Kuchiki of Canoga Park and Todd Sand of Costa Mesa, and the No. 1 contenders, Calla Urbanski of Chicago and Rocky Marval of New Egypt, N.J., came to the arena Tuesday for news conferences.

Urbanski and Marval already had created a stir by telling an interviewer this week that they believed they would get better scores if their images were more consistent with what the sport’s officials, including judges, want to project. Urbanski is a 31-year-old divorced and remarried waitress-barmaid; Marval, whose real name is Rocco Marvaldi, is a 26-year-old owner of a trucking company.

Some interpreted their comments as a slap at Kuchiki and Sand, who won at last year’s nationals despite losing the long program to Urbanski and Marval.

“One of the reasons Calla and Rocky didn’t win nationals . . . was because Calla missed a jump in the original program,” said John Nicks, who coaches Kuchiki and Sand. “They finished fourth and couldn’t get all the way up from there in the long program. One lesson to be learned is that they should skate a clean original program.”

Urbanski, to her credit, acknowledged Tuesday that her mistake, not the judges’ biases, prevented them from winning last year’s national title. She and her partner tried to end talk of a feud with the national champions. “I went out to California three times last year to see Todd on a friendship basis,” Marval said. “So there’s no rivalry.”

And so it probably isn’t Sand who is defacing the “I Helped Urbanski-Marval Go for the Gold” buttons that the challengers are passing out to people here who contribute to their cause.

With $80,000 to $100,000 in combined costs this season for training, costumes, travel and living expenses, and no sponsorship money other than the $20,000 or so they each receive from the USFSA and the U.S. Olympic Committee, Urbanski and Marval have turned to soliciting donations.

Urbanski’s mother also is taking up a collection at her beauty shop in Winnetka, Ill., but Marval doesn’t get as much moral support from the guys at Marvaldi Trucking. He has 15 employees and nine dump trucks. “I get a few comments about what we wear in skating,” he said. “We wear running tights for practices. They can’t picture a truck driver wearing a pair of running tights.”

Both Urbanski and Marval had several partners before teaming in the spring of 1990. Six years ago, they even skated with each other for three months before Marval’s coaches in Wilmington, Del., where they still train, advised him to find another partner.

“One day, I was there,” he said. “The next day, I wasn’t.”

Urbanski said: “I was a little surprised. But I was 25, divorced and paying for my own skating. Here they had a prime male, and they wanted him with a 16-, 17- or 18-year-old girl.”

That describes the thinking behind the pairing of Kuchiki and Sand, although the girl he teamed with in 1989 was 12. He was 26.

As the story goes, the first time she saw him after learning they had been matched, she cried. “I want to make it clear that it wasn’t because of Todd that she was crying,” Nicks said Tuesday. “It was after meeting with me.”

But even though Nicks is one of the world’s most successful pairs coaches, his results with them have been little short of astonishing. They finished second in the 1990 National Championships, won last year and took a bronze medal in the World Championships.

When Nicks finished with Tuesday’s news conference, he announced: “I’ll be here (Thursday) with Christopher Bowman. I hope you’ll take it easy on us.”

News conferences with Bowman are invariably one of the highlights of nationals week, at least for reporters, because no one can predict what the former child actor from Van Nuys will do or say.

The self-proclaimed “Hans Brinker from Hell,” Bowman, 24, returned to Southern California last month to train with Nicks after spending a year in Toronto.

“A reporter called recently and told me Christopher had given his last two coaches nervous breakdowns,” Nicks said. “He wanted to know if I would be the third.”

So?

“He skated last night,” Nicks said. “He didn’t skate very well. He didn’t skate bad. It was OK for a Monday. I’ve heard about his Mondays, but I’ve only been coaching him for three weeks. I have a lot to learn about Christopher--and about how not to have a nervous breakdown.”