Scherbo Gains Fans on Tour : Gymnastics: Winner of six gold medals to appear here Sunday.

The answers roll smoothly off gymnast Vitaly Scherbo’s tongue in proportion to how many times he’s been asked the same question.

“Ah, yes. I tell you, 20 to 25 times when I’m interviewed, I’m asked that,” he said by phone from Seattle. “I know what to answer.”

So Scherbo can easily explain why world-class competition is a breeze compared to the grind of the 23-city American exhibition tour in which he is performing. Scherbo and an entourage of current and former gymnastic gurus perform Sunday afternoon in the Tour of Olympic and World Champion Gymnasts at the Sports Arena.

Questions he hears less frequently sometimes stump Scherbo, although he is eager to try to accommodate.

“My English, it’s not so good,” said Scherbo, 20, who sparked the gymnastics world by claiming six Olympic gold medals in August. Scherbo’s team and all-around medals and individuals on the still rings, pommel horse, parallel bars and vault were two more than any other gymnast in history and one fewer than swimmer Mark Spitz’s seven golds, an Olympic record.

His medals are in his mother’s safekeeping back home in Minsk, Belarus, for good reason. Scherbo gave the pieces of gold to his mother after his apartment was robbed of video equipment, clothing and $25,000 upon his return from Barcelona.

“Now she carries them in her pocket,” Scherbo said. “It’s a joke.”

But Scherbo isn’t giddy about how important those medals are to his family. His mother would go to great lengths to keep his prizes out of harm’s way.

“Only after my mother’s death would anyone get them,” he said. “If someone wants them, they’d have to kill her first.”

Scherbo’s mother is the frequent recipient of his friendly fire. When he returns to Minsk--where he is a local hero--for peace and quiet, he doesn’t head for her home.

Said Scherbo, “I’m the first to win six gold medals, so it is like, ‘Oh my God, what is this boy doing?’ . . . I don’t like to see reporters when I go home for rest. So they go to see my mother. I go back and now she is a TV girl.”

Scherbo’s sense of humor is evolving as quickly as his English. In an interview with the New York Times earlier this month, Scherbo said he is a, “funny guy, but I can’t laugh yet with the others, until I understand the humor. I am putting too much Russian in the jokes.”

Sometimes it’s tit for tat.

On tour, Scherbo has become fast friends with the Americans in general and with Lance Ringnald in particular. Scherbo remembers a hilarious scene where he and his wife were speaking Russian, when Ringnald unexpectedly chimed in to translate a word for an American.

“I keep laughing. I want to know where he learns this word,” Scherbo said.

Thirteen years ago, Scherbo decided to learn gymnastics in spite of his mother’s protests.

“She wanted me to study,” he said. “But one day, on the way home from shopping, she stopped to talk to friends, and I run and play at the gym.”

By the time he was 14, Scherbo was training at the camp near Moscow. He became a Soviet national team member in 1987 and was the national champion by 1990.

It was in Moscow that he met his future wife, Irena.

In March, Scherbo and Irena expect their first child. If father does know best--and has any say in it--Scherbo’s offspring will not continue in what has become a family tradition.

“One gymnast in the family is enough,” he said. His wife and both Scherbo’s parents were accomplished acrobats and tumblers.

Because of the differences in the systems, Scherbo is unsure he would have done as well at Barcelona had he grown up and trained in the United States.

Former gymnast Steve Butcher, owner of the Southern California School of Gymnastics in Santee, agreed.

“He would have been successful, but he wouldn’t have had the opportunity to be that successful,” said Butcher, who has organized a group of 100 to watch the exhibition Sunday. “He would have had to go to college, and that detracts from the training.”

Although Scherbo’s accomplishments in Barcelona set new standards for his sport, he knows that on this tour, he shadows the popular Shannon Miller, winner of five Olympic medals, and Trent Dimas, the first American gymnast to win an individual gymnastics gold in a non-boycotted Olympics since 1932.

“Trent gets more screaming from the people,” he said. “But for me, it’s no problem. I did my work.”

Not that people are unfamiliar with his. It’s just that no one has bothered to learn Scherbo’s name. SCSG’s John Macready, one of Scherbo’s biggest fans, met him at the 1991 World Championships in Indianapolis.

“A lot of people know him by what he did, but they don’t know his name,” said Macready, the region’s top ranked junior and a current junior team member. “Everyone knows the name Trent Dimas, but with Scherbo, it’s like, ‘Oh yeah, that guy who won six gold medals.’ ”

Macready said the difficulty of Scherbo’s tricks and his ability to perform them flawlessly separates him from other gymnasts. Macready, a Santana High senior, found Scherbo’s personality equally flawless. Macready was impressed with Scherbo’s easygoing manner and lack of pretense.

“He told me he didn’t want to be treated like a celebrity, he just wanted to hang out,” Macready said. “I gave him a T-shirt and told him it was to remember me by, not because I worshiped him.”

Worshiping rights have been limited to high-profile gymnasts such as Nadia Comaneci, Mary Lou Retton and Olga Korbut. Although both are from Belarus, Korbut, who made her mark in the sport 20 years ago, and Scherbo are of different generations.

“I don’t know her. She never met me,” said Scherbo, who plans to represent his new country at the Olympics in Atlanta come 1996.

When the tour ends, the Scherbos will spend a month in Germany before they return home in mid-December. Until the 1996 games, their plans are flexible. But money-making is at the top of Scherbo’s priority list, and his talents will go to the highest bidder.

“I will go to Germany first. I will get 39,000 marks for 11 exhibitions and two competitions,” said Scherbo, who estimated his earnings on this tour at $48,000.

Sponsors from several European companies and some in the United States have tried to lure Scherbo, but he’ll hold out for the best contract offer.

“I have many offers,” he said. “But no big money. I hope for the best of money.”

Before this extravaganza, Scherbo had been to America more than a dozen times. With only three stops remaining on the tour--San Diego, Phoenix and Albuquerque--Scherbo has identified his favorite U.S. city.

“Salt Lake City,” he said. “I don’t know why. I just liked how it looked. It was fun and pretty, in my mind.”

His hectic schedule permits Scherbo scant time to play tourist--he visited Sea World in Orlando and hopes to see Disneyland in Anaheim--but Irena has had time to be a mall rat.

“Sometimes she goes to exhibitions, but many times, she goes shopping,” Scherbo said with a chuckle.