Attack Fails to Rattle Kuchiki : Violence against athletes: Canoga Park pairs skater says security at U.S. championships could be better but she is not worried by Kerrigan incident.

Natasha Kuchiki says she won’t be looking over her shoulder today during the final day of the U.S. Figure Skating championships at Joe Louis Arena in Detroit. But no one could blame her if she did.

Kuchiki, 17, a former national pairs champion and a resident of Canoga Park, was stunned along with the rest of the figure-skating world Thursday by the attack by an unknown assailant on Nancy Kerrigan, the defending women’s champion.

“Some people are a little crazy in the head,” Kuchiki said Friday by telephone from Detroit.

Kuchiki was on the ice with partner Rocky Marval of New Egypt, N.J., competing in the senior pairs technical program when Kerrigan was attacked while heading to her dressing room at an adjacent arena.

Kerrigan announced Friday that she would withdraw from the competition because of a knee injury suffered in the attack. However, Kuchiki said she will not let the attack affect her quest for an Olympic berth.

“The security here is OK, but it’s not great,” Kuchiki said. “It could be better. But I’m not really worried at all. This shouldn’t affect us at all.”

Kuchiki and Marval, who became Kuchiki’s partner in September, finished fourth in Thursday’s technical program. The duo must place third in the overall competition to qualify for the U.S. Olympic team for next month’s Winter Games in Lillehammer, Norway.

Qualifying, Kuchiki said, will require a near-flawless performance in today’s freestyle program.

“We’ll need just a clean program and we’re going to skate the best we can skate,” Kuchiki said. “I think we have a good chance. It’s been going really good. We’ve been pressed for time, but we’ve been cramming four or five years of skating into four months. It’s hard at times, but every day it’s getting better and better.”

Kuchiki returned to pairs skating last summer after competing on an individual basis for a year and a half.

Together with then-partner Todd Sand of Thousand Oaks, Kuchiki placed sixth in the 1992 Olympics in Albertville, France, after winning the 1991 U.S. championships and placing third in the World Championships.

After a disappointing eighth-place finish in the ’92 World Championships, Kuchiki and Sand parted ways and Sand later hooked up with Jenni Meno of Westlake, Ohio.

Sand and Meno placed first in the technical program in Detroit. Kyoko Ina (Guttenberg, N.J.) and Jason Dungien (Troy, Mich.) placed second. Karen Courtland (Whippany, N.J.) and Todd Reynolds (Houston) finished third.