U.S. Pairs 6th and 7th After Original Program

When asked by a reporter to assess the performance of her world-champion skaters Sunday night, Tamara Moskvina, the peerless pairs coach from St. Petersburg, Russia, turned the question around.

“You saw the program,” she said. “Did you like it?”

The reporter answered affirmatively.

“So, I agree with you,” she said.

So did the judges, all nine of whom awarded the Unified Team’s Natasha Mishkutienok and Artur Dmitriev first-place scores for their original program on the first night of Winter Olympics figure-skating competition.

Another of Moskvina’s pairs, Elena Betchke and Denis Petrov, were second, and Canada’s Isabelle Brasseur and Lloyd Eisler were third after the original program, which accounts for one-third of the final score. The medalists will be determined after Tuesday night’s freestyle program.

The United States’ Natasha Kuchiki of Canoga Park and Todd Sand of Costa Mesa, third in the world last year, have an outside chance for a medal after finishing sixth in the original program.

“Realistically, we’re shooting for fourth,” Kuchiki said.

Because judges usually reserve better scores for those who perform later in the program, Kuchiki and Sand were expecting the worst after they drew to skate second among the 18 pairs. But the international judges apparently liked the pair and scored them as well as could be expected considering Sand failed to land a double axel cleanly.

“If he hadn’t made that error, they would have been third or fourth,” said their coach, John Nicks. “No doubt about it.”

Calla Urbanski of Skokie, Ill., and Rocky Marval of New Egypt, N.J., the waitress-trucking company owner combination who upset Kuchiki and Sand in January to win the national championship, skated sluggishly while battling colds and were in seventh place. Marval, like Sand, had difficulty with his double axel, skating into the wall at one end of the arena after losing his balance.

“We were running on empty,” Urbanski said.

Before they started, Marval squeezed her hand and said: “This is it, this is the Olympics.”

More unfortunate were Jenni Meno of Westlake, Ohio, and Scott Wendland of Costa Mesa, who, like Kuchiki and Sand, skate under Nicks at Costa Mesa’s Ice Capades Chalet. Meno and Wendland drew to skate first.

“I tried to drop it back in,” she said.

The judges, who have not had much exposure to the pair, were not charitable, placing them 12th.

“They didn’t put one foot wrong,” an agitated Nicks said. “To finish 12th is just extraordinary.”