WORLD SPORTS SCENE / RANDY HARVEY : Kerrigan Slides Back Into Favorite’s Role

Look who’s feeling on top of the world.

After finishing third in the Olympics and second in the World Championships in 1992, Nancy Kerrigan faded to fifth in the world last year in an embarrassing performance and was considered a longshot for the gold medal in next February’s Winter Games. But after Kerrigan won her only two competitions this season before next month’s U.S. championships, some experts are touting her as the favorite in Norway.

“I think I’m the favorite, too,” she said recently, attributing some of her renewed confidence to sessions with a sports psychologist. “I feel I’m good enough to win, and I know it. Last year, I kind of thought I was, but I wasn’t sure.

“Last year could have been the best thing that happened to me because it showed me I had to focus. As soon as I went home from (the World Championships), I turned on the TV and watched it. I was so mad, and I just wanted to beat myself. Last year just made me fight harder.”

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With Kerrigan’s resurgence, skater Nicole Bobek told the Chicago Tribune that the battle at the Jan. 5-9 national championships in Detroit will be for second place, which will determine the United States’ only other woman competitor in Norway.

“If Nancy doesn’t do that great, the judges will still hold her up because she deserves to go,” Bobek said. “It’s going to be a war for who gets the second spot.”

Tonya Harding was the early bet, but she did little to impress judges with a fourth-place finish last weekend at the NHK competition in Tokyo. She will have to look over her shoulder at Bobek and Michelle Kwan, the 13-year-old from Torrance who recently won the world junior championship.

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Before two-time gold-medal winner Katarina Witt unveiled her new Olympic freestyle program during a recent exhibition in Frankfurt, Germany, young skaters were stationed in each corner of the rink to gather the many bouquets that were expected to rain on the ice after the performance.

But only one was thrown after Witt’s shaky interpretation of, ironically, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?”

Later, when a large birthday cake was wheeled onto the ice to celebrate Witt’s 28th birthday, she grabbed the microphone and told the audience, “I failed, I am sorry I let you down.” She left the arena in tears.

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The International Olympic Committee’s executive board received long-awaited recommendations from the program commission last week about sports that should and should not be included in the Games as the world prepares to embark upon a new century.

Perhaps because there is still much discussion to come before final decisions are made and also, presumably, to avoid a multitude of telephone calls from distressed supporters of endangered sports, executive board members have been extraordinarily discreet about the recommendations.

But David Miller of the London Times has reported five sports on the hit list, and although he does not name his sources, one can assume they are well placed. He is IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch’s biographer.

According to Miller, the program commission has proposed the eventual elimination of boxing, cycling, equestrian, modern pentathlon and synchronized swimming.

Among those, cycling is the only surprise. Because the sport’s most important competitions, such as the Tour de France, are on the roads where television coverage is lean but expensive, perhaps the program commission felt it was expendable.

As for the others, the IOC is not convinced that the ills with boxing’s judging are possible to correct, modern pentathlon and equestrian are considered antiquated and synchronized swimming has not generated much enthusiasm outside Canada. Even curling is popular there.

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Upon reading Miller’s report, Betty Watanabe, executive director of U.S. Synchronized Swimming, rushed a fax to her Canadian counterpart, professing hope that influential IOC executive board member Richard Pound of Montreal will be as diligent in attempts to save the sport as he was in getting Sylvie Frechette her gold medal.

After Pound steered the appeal through the international swimming federation, his IOC executive board colleagues agreed last week to upgrade Frechette, the Canadian solo synchro swimmer who settled for a silver medal in last summer’s Olympics after a judge made a computer error. The United States’ Kristen Babb-Sprague, who left Barcelona with the gold medal, will be allowed to keep it.

As long as the IOC seems to be in such a generous mood, the U.S. Olympic Committee officials said they are preparing a lengthy list of Americans who should receive gold medals upon further review of past Olympic injustices.

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Police in the Czech Republic continue to investigate the death of former track star Josef Odlozil, who died from head injuries suffered when a fight broke out on the dance floor at a Prague discotheque.

Odlozil, 55, became a sports scientist after a running career in which he finished second in the 1,500 meters in the 1964 Summer Olympics. According to a London newspaper, the European, he was on the verge of revealing evidence that Czechoslovakia’s past success in track and field was because of government-ordained steroid use. Speculation is that he might have been murdered in order to silence him.