THE OLYMPICS WINTER GAMES AT ALBERTVILLE : Blair Is Golden for 500 Meters : Speedskating: In a popular victory, she becomes the first woman to win the event in consecutive Olympics.

While waiting for Bonnie Blair to appear Monday for the awards ceremony, where she would have a speedskating gold medal draped around her neck for the second time in four years, the Dutch fans at the Olympic Oval began singing “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean.”

The Americans, including more than 40 members of Blair’s family and friends from her hometown of Champaign, Ill., and points north, south, east and west, soon added their voices, followed by the French. Before long, the song was echoing off the majestic, snow-capped Alps that rise above Albertville.

To say that Blair’s second consecutive Winter Olympics victory in the 500 meters was universally popular is an understatement. Speedskating fans throughout the world admire her for the same reasons Americans do, for her wholesomeness.

Congratulating Blair with a hug after she skated--because it was obvious even then that no one who followed would come close to her time--was one of her fiercest rivals for many years, former East German Christa Rothenburger Luding, the silver medalist behind Blair in 1988 at Calgary, and the bronze medalist Monday.

Since the Berlin Wall fell, athletes from both blocs, East and West, have gotten to know each other better, and Blair and Luding, although they cannot speak each other’s languages, have discovered that they are soulmates. When Luding gave birth in 1990, Blair sent her a gift because, she said: “I figured there were a lot of goodies she wouldn’t be able to get over there.”

That is the same Blair who dedicated this gold medal to her late father, Charlie, who died of lung cancer in 1990. According to the family, Charlie dropped off his pregnant wife, Eleanor, at the hospital on the day Bonnie would be born and raced off to see three of his other five children compete in a speedskating meet.

“To begin with, it was more of his dream that I be in the Olympics than it was mine,” she said, her eyes welling with tears. “He said, ‘You’re going to win a gold medal.’ I thought he was crazy. He was with me in ‘88, and I’m glad he was there to see it. But this one was definitely for him.”

In winning, Blair, 27, established herself as one of the sport’s all-time great sprinters. No other woman has won the 500 meters in consecutive Olympics.

“That makes this one pretty special,” she said.

Her time was less so. The 40.33-second clocking was more than a second behind the world record of 39.10 that she set in 1988. But the Calgary Olympics offered ideal conditions for speedskaters, competition in an indoor facility. Here, the oval is outdoors, and the bright afternoon sun of recent days has turned the track into slush. Hoping for firmer footing, organizers postponed the start of Monday’s event by one hour to 5 p.m.

Despite the puddles of water on the ice, Blair said that she had hoped to skate faster.

That also had been the hope of her mother, who held her breath during the entire 500 meters.

“I’m shaking all over,” Eleanor Blair said afterward. “She’s got to skate faster.”

One of Blair’s U.S. teammates, Dan Jansen, one of the favorites in the men’s 500 Saturday, said: “It wasn’t Bonnie’s best race. Don’t get me wrong, she won the gold medal. But that was a lot closer than I thought it would be.”

It could have been a lot closer. China’s Ye Qiaobo, who finished second in 40.51, said that she believed she lost two-tenths of a second, enough to have given her the gold medal, because of an awkward crossover with the woman she was paired against, the Unified Team’s Elena Tiouchniakova.

Ye, who appeared from television replays to have the right-of-way, straightened up, out of her aerodynamic stance, to avoid a collision when Tiouchniakova failed to yield, but the referee disallowed a protest from the Chinese team. She still finished ahead of Luding, whose time was 40.57. Another former East German, Monique Garbrecht, was fourth in 40.63.

Ye, 28, cried when she was not allowed a chance to skate again.

“I was crying because the Olympic Games are four years of hard work, and I am old now,” she said later in halting English.

As popular as was Blair’s victory, it was difficult not to feel compassion for Ye. After arriving at Calgary to train a few days before the opening ceremony in 1988, she received word that she and a teammate had tested positive for anabolic steroids the previous week in the world sprint championships at Milwaukee. The International Skating Union suspended them for 18 months.

“We were told to go back to China,” she said, breaking into tears at the memory. “At that time, I really wished the plane had gone down. I didn’t know what I could say to my mother, my sisters and my best friends.”

When she arrived home at Changchun in the Jilin Province of northern China, she was greeted by a newspaper editorial that she said “smeared me.” Her father is one of the newspaper’s editors, but she said that he was not permitted to write about her side of the story.

She said that it was not until she returned to competition in 1990 that Chinese authorities allowed her to reveal that a team doctor, since banished, had given the speedskaters performance-enhancing drugs without telling them.

“At that time, I hated him very much,” she said of the doctor. “But, not very much in the end. Maybe he thinks if a skater gets successful, there will be good things for him. He wanted the Chinese to get to the world level sooner.”

She said that she considered retiring, but a “special friend” talked her out of it.

“He said, ‘This was not your mistake. You have been training hard for more than 10 years. You must continue. You want to show everybody you don’t need any doping to get a gold medal.’ ”

During the 18 months she was suspended, she said she improved her technique by watching films of Blair.

“Maybe I will try again next Olympic Games,” Ye said.

Considering that the next Winter Olympics are two years from now, at Lillehammer, Norway, Blair might be there as well. But she did not want to think that far ahead Monday.

“I have two more races to go this week, you guys,” she told reporters.

Her best chance for another gold medal will be in Friday’s 1,000. As in the 500, she is undefeated at that distance on the World Cup circuit this winter. But she also is considered a medal contender in Wednesday’s 1,500.

“As soon as I put on my skates to start getting ready for this season, it was like I was back at Calgary,” said Blair, who had two sub-par seasons after winning the world sprint championship in 1989. “I felt like the old Bonnie Blair again.”