FIGURE SKATING / U.S. CHAMPIONSHIPS : Mitchell Finds Balance After Slip of Tongue

Mark Mitchell was a little short of brilliant on the ice in 1992, earning no less than the co-favorite’s role in the first phase of the men’s competition today at the America West Arena in the U.S. figure skating championships. It was off the ice, in the safety of his Boston apartment, that he was not so sure footed.

“I slipped,” he said this week.

Translation: In a sport in which athletes are advised to watch their steps on and off the ice because they are always being judged, Mitchell shared his true feelings with a newspaper reporter.

“Like in everything else, you go through stages,” he said. “That was my resentment stage.”

Who could blame him?

He finished third last January in the national championships at Orlando, Fla., which, under normal circumstances, would have earned him a berth in the Winter Olympics a month later at Albertville, France. But the U.S. Figure Skating Assn. named him an alternate, sending in his place a two-time national champion, Todd Eldredge, who could not compete in the nationals because of a back injury.

Had it been the first time he was the victim of someone else’s back injury, perhaps Mitchell would have accepted it more graciously. But in 1990, he also finished third in the nationals, only to have his invitation to the World Championships delivered by the USFSA to injured Christopher Bowman.

“How could they do that to me again?” Mitchell said in the now-infamous interview with the Hartford Courant after returning home from Orlando. “I’ve had it with them. I’m sick of being nice. I’m sick of it all.

“I love to skate. I know that. But the last two years, I’ve lost a lot of faith in the judging, in the sport. I see young kids learning to skate, and I want to tell them, ‘Don’t do it . . . it’s not fair what they can do to you emotionally.’ ”

Asked during a news conference this week about his comments, Mitchell grinned sheepishly.

“It was one of the most difficult times of my life,” he said. “My desire disappeared. I went to the rink that day to skate, and I just couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to skate. I turned around and drove home. As I walked into the apartment, the phone rang, and it was the reporter. It was not a good time.

“It takes a certain temperament and patience to be in this sport. It’s not for everyone. But it has been good for me. That was just a fleeting moment in my life.”

Mitchell, 24, prefers to recall a moment in March in the World Championships at Oakland. Named to the U.S. team by the USFSA as a consolation for his Olympic disappointment, he skated “the performance of my life” in the freestyle phase of the competition and improved from eighth to fifth in the final standings.

“I finally believed I’m a good skater,” he said.

He has so much confidence that he will skate his freestyle program Saturday to “Don Quixote,” the music used by Great Britain’s John Curry during his legendary winning Olympic performance in 1976.

“That’s why I shied away from it,” Mitchell said. “It was such an outstanding program that he did in the Olympics that I didn’t feel I was capable of living up to it. Not until now.”

Figure Skating Notes

Mark Mitchell’s primary competition at Phoenix is expected to come from Todd Eldredge, who again is having physical problems after bruising his back in a fall Wednesday. Until then, Eldredge said, he felt extremely fit. He credited that to his move last September from San Diego to Detroit. “The whole mood of the East and the Midwest is not so laid back like California,” he said. “Being in that atmosphere has been good for training. My golf game has gone downhill, but my skating has improved.” . . . The first two men in these U.S Championships are expected to represent the United States in the World Championships at Prague in the Czech Republic March 10-14. . . . As a result of the U.S. success in the women’s competition in last year’s World Championships, a gold medal for Kristi Yamaguchi and a silver for Nancy Kerrigan, the first three women at Phoenix will be invited to Prague. Olympians Kerrigan and Tonya Harding Gillooly are favored for two of the berths, but at least four women are considered contenders for the third.