OLYMPICS FIGURE SKATING : Yamaguchi’s Growth Measured Off the Ice

Slowly, Kristi Yamaguchi is growing up.

Since winning the world junior championship in 1988, Yamaguchi has been a rising presence in figure skating. Her performances, increasingly marked by large doses of grace and athleticism, have made her a national and world champion. She enters the Olympics as the favorite in the spotlight event.

But she is no Katarina Witt or Dorothy Hamill or Peggy Fleming. She does not have the kind of command they held over an audience -- and the judges. While those champions forever seemed in control, Yamaguchi always appears one tenuous step away from a critical error.

Her career is dotted with just enough mistakes, particularly at the U.S. championships, to have kept Yamaguchi from dominating a sport in which long title reigns are common.

The 1992 version of Kristi Yamaguchi, however, seems far less vulnerable. Her skating at the national championships in Orlando spoke for itself. Even Yamaguchi spoke well, if not eloqently, for herself.

Once ridiculed for her poor communication skills and her tendency to giggle and shrug rather than answer even non-controversial questions, Yamaguchi now seems more comfortable with the media and the fans. No, not as comfortable as she does while skating to “Madame Butterfly” or “Malaguena,” but certainly more at ease.

And that is the most impressive advancement of all.

“Kristi,” says her coach, Christy Ness, “has gone from this little kid to a young woman.”

“My life really has not changed too much, except that I make more public appearances now,” the 20-year-old Yamaguchi says. “But I’m trying to concentrate on training and not get sidetracked.”

So she has not helped promote her appearance on cereal boxes. And she has not done publicity for her work with a bottled water company.

Yamaguchi moved to Canada last year to train with Ness; dropped pairs in a painful split with longtime partner Rudy Galindo that he still resents; and set about making herself into a champion.

“Last year definitely had a positive effect,” Yamaguchi says. “I concentrated on singles at my competitions and put in all of my energy that went before into two practices a day. I know it would have been difficult if I had two other events to worry about at the world championships.”

Worrying only about singles was almost no worry at all. She skated her best pressure program and came away from Munich with her biggest victory.

Until Orlando.

“After three times being second, it is a very important championship for me,” she says. “I feel the best skaters and the toughest competition is at nationals.”

“Since Christy quit pairs,” Ness says, “she has taken up off-ice training daily and it’s helped. At the major championships, she no longer has to juggle schedules or have to eliminate some practices because she has to compete.”

But Hess makes it clear that Yamaguchi’s past failures, particularly her run of second-place finishes at the U.S. championships when a gold medal was within easy reach, did not stem solely from being overwrought.

“Skating is not cut and dry,” Ness says. “We’re looking at something other than the finish line. Anytime Kristi has been beaten, she’s made a mistake.”

Her biggest mistake might have been in retreating from the public. Her shyness often was construed as lack of intelligence. She seemed sheltered by family and coaches to the point where the skating public knew little about her.

At the same time, the elegant look -- on and off the ice -- of Jill Trenary and the athleticism and entertaining frankness of Tonya Harding overshadowed Yamaguchi. She was most notable for the singles-pairs doubles, but not even two national pairs titles carried her into the limelight.

That lack of acclaim got to the point where she once was asked why she spoke English so well. As a fourth generation Japanese-American, why shouldn’t she?

Although she doesn’t make it an issue, Yamaguchi is the most famous Japanese-American athlete around. Certainly she could play off that for sponsorship endorsements in the Asian community. But she doesn’t.

“I definitely get a lot of support from the Asian community back home, and I appreciate it,” Yamaguchi says.

She is just as reticent about her parents’ background. Her mother was born in a relocation camp for Japanese-Americans and her father also was placed in one as a child.

“It’s something they worked through and they would rather look to the future,” she says.

As a child, Kristi had such badly clubbed feet that she was forced to wear casts until she was 9 months old. Then, she wore corrective shoes.

This, too, is an area she says little about.

“I don’t really remember it,” she says with a giggle.

So with all of these subjects either taboo or not within her verbal sphere of influence, why does Yamaguchi present the impression of having grown up?

Because, unlike in the past, there are several topics on which she offers opinions. She even offers some insight -- into herself and her sport.

“I’m happy with myself, with my skating,” she says. “I like living in Edmonton. I have my own apartment and I like being on my own and making my own decisions.”

Those decisions might be as lightweight as what to cook for dinner in the apartment she shares with Danish champion Anisette Torp-Lind. Or where to hang out with Kurt Browning, the three-time world champion from Canada with whom she trains, and her other friends in Edmonton.

Or they might be as critical as changes in her program designed to highlight her considerable strengths. Yamaguchi, like most skaters, relies heavily on Ness, her coach, and choreographer Sandra Bezic, the mastermind of Brian Boitano’s magnificen long program that won Olympic gold in 1988.

But she has increased her input recently, especially since losing to Midori Ito at the Lalique Trophy, the most significant pre-Olympic event.

The Olympic championship could come down to the Japanese jumping machine against the Japanese-American ballerina. Yamaguchi doesn’t know Ito well, but did say Ito is fun to talk with -- “even though she doesn’t know very much English.”

As for Yamaguchi’s Japanese? That’s even more limited than Ito’s English. They’ll do their talking on the ice.

“It will be great fun,’ Yamaguchi says. “I don’t think there’s a rivalry between us, or between Tonya and me. I believe it’s just the skating that matters.”