Spot Expected for Kerrigan on U.S. Team : Figure skating: She is forced to withdraw from Olympic trials because of injury suffered in assault, but probably will go to Norway anyway if she can recover in time.

While police expanded their search for the man who assaulted Nancy Kerrigan, she withdrew Friday from the U.S. Figure Skating Championships because of leg injuries suffered in the attack the day before.

But even though she is not competing in the championships, which serve as the trials for next month’s Winter Olympics in Norway, U.S. Figure Skating Assn. officials said their rules allow them to give her one of two berths reserved for U.S. women if she is fit.

“Right now, my focus is just to get healthy and, hopefully, if I’m chosen for the Olympics, to get ready for that because I’ve worked so hard,” said the 24-year-old Kerrigan, the defending champion and 1992 Olympic bronze medalist. “I’ve never worked so hard in my life.”

With the woman who began this week as the overwhelming favorite watching from a well secured private box high above the Joe Louis Arena rink, 19 skaters performed in the opening phase of the competition, aware that they are probably vying for only one Olympic berth.

After the technical program, which accounts for one-third of the final score, a former national champion, Tonya Harding of Portland, Ore., is leading; Nicole Bobek of Colorado Springs, Colo., is second; Michelle Kwan of Torrance is third, and Elaine Zayak of Monsey, N.Y., is fourth. Zayak, the 1982 world champion, is making her return to amateur competition.

If those skaters, or their coaches, have complaints about the possibility of Kerrigan going to Norway without having competed in the national championships, they did not voice them to reporters.

“This happened because of no fault of Nancy’s at all,” said Frank Carroll, who coaches the 13-year-old Kwan at Lake Arrowhead’s International Ice Castles Training Center. “It’s a tragic thing, and it would be more tragic if they discarded her if she was capable of going and skating well.”

Kerrigan’s coach, Evy Scotvold, agreed.

“Nancy is the top-ranked skater in our country,” he said. “If she can heal in time for the Olympic Games, we cannot let a vicious criminal assault . . . take someone off the Olympic team. If she can go, she has to go. Otherwise, we are honoring that attack.”

The 45 members of the USFSA’s international committee will meet after tonight’s freestyle program to rule on Kerrigan. If they follow precedent, she and the winner here will join the Olympic team, and the runner-up will be designated as an alternate in case Kerrigan cannot prove fitness by Jan. 31. That is the deadline for the U.S. Olympic Committee to submit figure skating entries for the Feb. 12-27 Winter Games. The women’s competition is scheduled Feb. 23 and 25.

Mahlon Bradley, an orthopedic surgeon who examined Kerrigan on Friday, said she will undergo a magnetic resonance imaging test Monday to determine whether there is cartilage damage to her injured right knee, but, if it is negative, he predicted that she will be able to return to the ice in her Cape Cod, Mass., training rink in two weeks.

Asked whether she could be fit for the Olympics, he said, “We’re optimistic about that possibility.”

The X-rays taken Thursday revealed no fractures, but there was swelling in the knee overnight.

“The decision not to skate (Friday) was made by the medical staff based on pain, lack of motion and lack of strength in the knee,” Bradley said. “She would have been unable to do any of her elements.”

Kerrigan, who was limping when she arrived for an afternoon news conference, said she tried to convince her doctors that she could skate Friday but was unable to perform even simple strength tests they devised for her.

Of the attack, which occurred while she was walking toward a dressing room after finishing an afternoon practice at Cobo Arena, Kerrigan said she turned when she heard a commotion and saw a man charging toward her. But she said she did not get a good look at him before he took “one good whack” at her knee with “a long black stick.”

The man broke a locked plexiglass door to escape and was still at large Friday night.

“I’m very optimistic, personally, that we’ll catch him,” said Detroit’s deputy chief of police, Benny Napoleon. But he acknowledged that there were no suspects and that only one eyewitness had seen the man face to face.

Napoleon said that videotapes of the practice session taken by spectators were being reviewed in the hope that police could spot a man who fit the description they have. He added that they are exploring leads in Oregon, Texas and Ontario, Canada, as well as Detroit.

Kerrigan said that she is “paranoid” about the chance of another attack but acknowledged that she will not be able to avoid the spotlight as long as she is among the world’s leading figure skaters.

“It would be kind of hard for me to be less of a public person,” she said. “Since this happened, I’ve been on the news every half hour. So if people didn’t know me before, they do now.”

One newscast showed a videotape of her writhing on the floor after the attack and asking, “Why me?”

“Why anybody?” Kerrigan said Friday. “That’s what I should have been asking.”