FIGURE SKATING : Case of Pros, Ams and Pro-Ams

There is no sport more difficult to figure these days than figure skating. For example, consider the Hershey’s Kisses Pro-Am tonight and Wednesday night at the Sports Arena.

Who are the amateurs?

In the $330,000 event, the winners in the six-man and six-woman fields will earn $40,000, and even the last-place finishers are guaranteed $20,000.

Aware that the line between amateurs and professionals is as thin as the blade on a skating boot, Claire Ferguson, president of the U.S. Figure Skating Assn., said she has instructed her staff to come up with another name for future pro-ams, if there are any.

Ferguson said this competition, only the second of its kind in which skaters eligible for the Olympics compete against those who are not, is part of an “experimental phase” for figure skating.

Referring to rule changes in recent years that eliminated school figures from major competition, allowed amateurs to accept money for skating and, most intriguing, gave professionals a chance to be called amateurs again, Ronna Gladstone had a more dramatic description for what the sport is experiencing.

“It’s like a whirlwind,” said Gladstone, who coaches Mark Mitchell. “I don’t think anyone knows where this sport is going.”

As in most storms, nerves have been frayed.

Asked about the reception he expected to his announcement last week that he has applied to regain his eligibility, Brian Boitano, the 1988 Olympic champion, said, “I’ve already gotten the reception I’m going to get. I’ve gotten a lot of support--but not from the skaters, not from people who think they have something to lose from it.”

He was particularly upset by critical comments attributed to Gladstone, calling her hypocritical because she had welcomed him back to his face.

Gladstone said those comments were taken out of context, but she confessed last week that she has mixed emotions.

“I love Brian, and I’m a huge supporter of his,” she said. “I told him, ‘I hope you go back to the Olympics, and I hope my kid makes it, too.’

“But I feel for these boys (coming up). When the press asks them what they think, naturally they say, ‘I think it’s great, and it’s going to make me a better skater.’ But if you get them alone, they say, ‘It’s my time. It’s not fair.’ ”

That is, more or less, what Mitchell said in an interview last week. Emphasizing that he has nothing personal against Boitano, the runner-up in the 1993 U.S. championships said that he is philosophically opposed to professionals participating in the Olympics in any sport.

He added: “There are only two spots open (for U.S. men in the 1994 Winter Olympics), and to take one of them away from other people, I don’t think that’s right. Brian has had his two Olympics.”

Mitchell also questioned whether Boitano is competing as a professional or an amateur this week at the Sports Arena.

“I asked, but I wasn’t given an answer,” he said. “Could we please know?”

Boitano will compete as a professional. Although he has applied to have his eligibility restored, he will not be officially reinstated until next month, according to a spokesman for the USFSA.

Skating Notes

Three Olympic medalists are in the Pro-Am men’s field, including the champions from 1984 and 1988, Scott Hamilton and Brian Boitano, and the runner-up from 1992, Paul Wylie. . . . The women’s field includes two Olympic medalists, second-place Rosalynn Sumners from 1984 and third-place Nancy Kerrigan from 1992, and 1990 world champion, Jill Trenary.