He Skates Past All the Glitz : Figure skating: Viktor Petrenko, the Olympic gold-medal winner from Ukraine, trains outside Las Vegas.

To find Viktor Petrenko, look for the largest collection of neon signs in this city, perhaps in this world, and drive in the opposite direction. Take the I-95 north until the only lights you see are those from oncoming cars and the signs warn, “Freeway Ends.”

Even though the Santa Fe Ice Rink and bowling alley are only about 12 miles from the Golden Nugget, the piece of desert on which they are located might as well be the end of the earth as far as most visitors to Las Vegas are concerned.

But Petrenko calls it his place of business. And although his English is not quite fluent, the 1992 Winter Olympic men’s figure skating champion does mean business.

Attached to the rink and the bowling alley is a hotel/casino, but Petrenko has gone no closer to the gaming tables than to the automatic pin-setting machines. “I saw Roy Rogers--I think this is his name--and Siegfried & Roy,” he said of his only two forays onto the Strip. “I have no time for shows, just training.”

He has lived since last summer in Las Vegas, but it could just as well be Butte, Mont., to him. Or his native Odessa in Ukraine.

On a monthlong break from a 72-city ice show tour, Petrenko, 23, returned home on the Monday after Thanksgiving to prepare for two competitions organized by two-time Olympic champion Dick Button.

In the first, the World Professional Figure Skating Championships Saturday at Landover, Md., Petrenko discovered how much work he still must do, finishing fourth behind Brian Boitano, Paul Wylie and Brian Orser. Petrenko will have another chance against the same three competitors Thursday night in the Challenge of Champions at the Forum.

The competition at Landover was the first time Petrenko and Boitano had met since the 1988 Winter Games at Calgary, Canada, where the American won and the Ukrainian, then competing for the former Soviet Union, finished third.

In almost five years since, Petrenko has matched Boitano in gold medals but not in stature.

Boitano skated superbly to win at Calgary, then used that performance to launch an ambitious professional career that has won him a multitude of admirers. He also has won all 10 pro competitions that he has entered.

Petrenko, in contrast, was not at his best in the 1992 Winter Olympics at Albertville, France, where he won a controversial decision over Wylie from a panel of international judges and failed to inspire the same enthusiasm within the skating world for his triumph that other recent champions such as Boitano, Scott Hamilton, Robin Cousins and John Curry had.

Among the rink-side critics was Boitano, but his comments were polite when compared to those of some others, particularly veteran coach John Nicks, who called Petrenko’s freestyle performance the worst he had seen by an Olympic champion in more than 30 years.

Petrenko was stung by the criticism, more so because he did not entirely disagree with it.

So now, given an opportunity for as much redemption as a couple of made-for-television pro competitions can offer, he has gone into isolation in an ice rink in the desert, working long, tedious hours while the circus--or, perhaps in this case, the Circus Circus--goes on around him.

That frustrates his agent, Michael Rosenberg of Palm Desert, who recently rejected offers for Petrenko to appear nationwide on two television shows because the skater would not alter his training schedule.

As a result, when a reporter called to arrange an interview, Rosenberg was not encouraging. “When he’s on the tour, he knows that publicity is part of the routine because it’s show business,” he said. “But he takes the competitions very seriously. I try to explain to him that there are going to be a lot of them in his career and not every one is like the Olympics. But he’s still in that mind-set.”

A few days later, however, Rosenberg said Petrenko had agreed to the interview, with the stipulation that he would not have to interrupt his workout to answer questions or pose for pictures.

But when the reporter arrived in Las Vegas and called to arrange a time for the interview, Petrenko was hardly welcoming.

“I have no time for this,” he said.

Reminded that he had agreed to the interview, Petrenko eventually relented, although with obvious reluctance, and told the reporter to meet him the next afternoon at the rink.

Whether he was in a better mood, or just resigned to the inevitable, Petrenko was apologetic when he arrived at the rink. After making cordial small talk while stretching, he said that he would do the interview at his house after the workout.

To fully appreciate the ability of most world-class skaters, it is necessary to watch them practice. Because nerves are as difficult for most of them to get a grip on as the ice, skaters rarely are at their best during competitions, particularly in the triple-axel-in-your-face amateur ranks. For that reason, even veteran figure skating observers can count the virtually flawless competitive performances they have seen, like Boitano’s in 1988, on one hand.

They do not yet have to use one of their fingers for Petrenko. Either because of his chronic stamina problems, he has invariably faltered in either his original or freestyle programs in international competitions, which is the reason he did not take his presumed place at the head of the class after his bronze-medal winning performance in the 1988 Winter Olympics.

Instead, he finished third, sixth, second and second in the next four World Championships before breaking through in the 1992 Winter Games, after which he also became the world champion.

But, during a workout, his exceptional talent was apparent. His triple jumps, which he has been performing in one form or another since he was 11, were bold. They did not, however, conflict with the graceful flow as he glided across the ice, a classical style he learned from his longtime choreographer, a former dancer with the Odessa Ballet.

The only coach he has had since he was 10, the perfectionist Galina Zmievskaya, forced him to repeat his transitions into jumps several times. But, near the end of the two-hour session, other skaters cleared the ice when the music of “Malaguena,” a powerful Spanish ballad, began to play so that they could watch when Petrenko performed without interruption the freestyle program that he will unveil at the Forum. When he finished, even his coach applauded.

“This is true Viktor skating,” Zmievskaya said afterward in halting English. She lives in Odessa, where she coaches other skaters, but she came to Las Vegas late last month to help prepare Petrenko for the upcoming competitions.

“Viktor does not like shows, (he) likes competition,” she said. “Shows are just dancing.”

Later, while driving his black sports car toward his house, Petrenko confirmed that he prefers competing. The show that he headlines along with Canadian Elizabeth Manley and the Russian dance team of Marina Klimova and Sergei Ponomarenko, the World Cup Figure Skating Champions, sponsored by Ronald McDonald’s Children Charities, made 19 stops in November and has an equally challenging schedule for the first four months of next year.

“You don’t pay any attention to the city you’re in,” Petrenko said. “You arrive, you skate and you’re gone. It’s a job.”

Asked if he would consider taking advantage of new International Skating Union rules that would allow him to apply for reinstatement as an amateur so that he could defend his Olympic championship in 1994 at Lillehammer, Norway, he said, “Why not?”

Rosenberg could probably tell him a reason or two, no doubt having something to do with his marquee value as an athlete who retired while on top as opposed to one who lingered too long.

“I asked him about it,” Rosenberg had said a few days earlier. “He hesitated about four seconds and said, ‘No, never.’ I think he realizes that he’s done all you can do as an amateur skater and now it’s time to take the gold medal and run.”

That conversation was repeated to Petrenko while sitting in the living room of the two-story house near the rink that he shares with his wife, Nina. He has been married for six months to his coach’s daughter, and their living room is decorated not with memorabilia from his career as a skater or hers as a dancer but with wedding pictures.

Petrenko has said for several years that Las Vegas is his favorite American city. “Machines, slot machines,” he once told an interviewer who asked him about it. But he moved here because Karin Doherty, a coach who befriended him and Zmievskaya years ago, is now director of skating at the Santa Fe rink.

If he decides to rejoin the amateurs, Petrenko said that he probably would return to Odessa.

“I don’t know what Michael was telling you,” he said of his agent. “Maybe he doesn’t want me to come back, but, for me, why not? I’m only 23.”

Petrenko is aware that he would be subjecting himself to the pressure that has melted down so many amateur skaters, including himself on occasion. But instead of considering that a reason against applying for reinstatement, he said that is a reason for it.

“That’s right,” he said. “I miss that pressure that I had in competitions as an amateur. I still have pressure as a professional. I take it serious. But it’s kind of different. When you tour, you are not in best shape for competitions. I miss that feeling when competition is everything.”

To return would be, he admitted, a gamble. But where better than his new hometown to make a decision like that?

* A FIRST: Goalie Manon Rheaume became the first woman to play in a regular-season pro hockey game. C3