‘94 WINTER OLYMPICS / LILLEHAMMER : Now the Hard Part Awaits Kerrigan : Figure skating: She has a history of failing in big events. Competition should be wide open.

The first time the lords and ladies of international figure skating got a good look at Nancy Kerrigan, they were less than impressed. She was in first place after the technical program at the 1990 Goodwill Games in Tacoma, Wash., but succumbed to the pressure in the freestyle and plopped into fifth place.

Like handicappers standing at the rail to check out a young thoroughbred, they agreed that she had good form. But she was skittish. Perhaps, they said, blinders would help.

So, when Jane Pauley, who probably had never met the skater or seen her compete until she interviewed her a few weeks back, told a national television audience that she cannot believe anyone could ever have concluded that Kerrigan is fragile, it is apparent that NBC’s researchers did not do their homework.

Neither have the people who are setting her up as the gold-medal favorite in the women’s competition that begins on Feb. 23.

That is not to say she cannot win. But even if she had not been set back by the injuries to her right knee in the most overblown attack since Grenada, and even if she was not competing against a field that includes world champion Oksana Baiul of Ukraine, four-time European champion Surya Bonaly of France and two-time world bronze medalist Chen Lu of China--and, as of Saturday, national champion Tonya Harding--Nancy Kerrigan would still have had to overcome her No. 1 nemesis, Nancy Kerrigan.

A welder’s daughter from Stoneham, Mass., who graciously accepted many responsibilities around the house to help out her legally blind mother, and who played hockey with her brothers in her leisure time, Kerrigan, her coaches say, was a tough kid outside of a figure skating rink. Inside one, she froze like an ice carving.

After Kerrigan returned home from the Goodwill Games in 1990, coaches Evy and Mary Scotvold sent her to a sports psychologist, and if the positive-mental-attitude people were thinking of using a poster child, Kerrigan was it. She has never skated better, before or since, than she did in 1991. Her placement in the national championships was only third, but the competition was so daunting that future Olympic gold-medalist Kristi Yamaguchi was the runner-up.

In the 1991 national championships at Minneapolis, Harding was a revelation.

Off the ice, she revealed that she had married Jeff Gillooly.

How do you spell that? a reporter asked, unaware that someday the name would be as well known in the United States as Capone, Dillinger and Nixon.

“H-A-R-D-I-N-G,” she replied.

On the ice, she revealed an undisputed national champion. Perhaps because of her asthma, but more likely because of her inattention to serious training, Harding had never been considered more than a diamond in the rough. But, arriving in Minneapolis with all her edges polished, she was a glittering vision of the female figure skater of the future, one who combined superb athleticism with artistry and exuberance to create spontaneous combustion.

She became only the second woman, the first American, to perform a clean triple axel--the most difficult triple jump because, despite its name, it actually demands 3 1/2 revolutions--then appeared to float above the ice for the rest of her four-minute freestyle program, earning raves from the audience and the judges.

Sitting transfixed among the crowd that afternoon was 10-year-old Michelle Kwan, a talented novice who was not particularly committed to the sport. Until she saw Harding. Kwan told her parents that she would work harder so that one day she could be among the best. She wanted to be like Tonya.

While Kwan went home to Torrance to fulfill her promise--only three years later, at 13, she finished second to Harding in the national championships in Detroit--Kerrigan, 24, and Harding, 23, have not fulfilled theirs.

Kerrigan, a reserved New Englander, did not enjoy sharing her innermost fears with a sports psychologist and quit going after the 1991 competitive season. She won the bronze medal in the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville, France, behind Yamaguchi and Japan’s Midori Ito.

Meantime, Harding, who whines that the snooty figure skating Establishment never gives her a break because she is from the wrong side of the tracks in Portland, Ore., had third place in the 1992 Olympic trials in Orlando, Fla., gift-wrapped for her. Ohioan Lisa Ervin outskated her, but, at only 14, she was, in effect, told by the judges to wait her turn.

That gave Harding a plane ticket to France, but, ignoring advice from her coach, she chose not to use it until three days before her competition and finished fourth, a testimony to her natural ability considering that she was knock-kneed from jet lag.

One year later, after Yamaguchi’s retirement, Kerrigan and Harding were expected to battle for the national title in Phoenix. But Harding was a virtual no-show, finishing fourth, and the competition became a coronation for a shaky Kerrigan. She did not seem comfortable as America’s new ice princess, on or off the ice.

“Are you aware you’ve been called the Irish Katarina Witt?” a reporter asked, figuring it was a compliment.

“I’m not Irish,” she huffed.

Kerrigan’s lowest tide was to come. In a performance reminiscent of Tacoma in 1990, she finished first in the technical program in last year’s World Championships in Prague, then disintegrated in the freestyle, dropping to fifth.

As she tearfully waited for her scores, she told the Scotvolds: “I just want to die.” At a pro-am in the Sports Arena a month later, she fell twice and finished second to Caryn Kadavy.

Claire Ferguson, president of the U.S. Figure Skating Assn., expressed concern that Kerrigan might be one of those athletes more comfortable out of the spotlight, happier in second or third than first.

Evy Scotvold fumed, telling Kerrigan that he saw no reason for her to continue in her bid to return to the Winter Olympics if she had no more mental resolve than she showed in 1993.

It might have been a tactic, but Kerrigan responded positively, resuming sessions with a sports psychologist.

She went to Piruetten, an international competition in the Olympic Amphitheatre in nearby Hamar, where the Olympic competition will be held, early this winter, and won, beating Bonaly and Chen. She went to a pro-am in Philadelphia in December and won there, too.

Informed in Philadelphia that some figure skating experts now considered her the Olympic favorite, she said: “I think I’m the favorite, too. I competed against all the contenders except Oksana at Piruetten, and I beat them all. I feel I’m good enough to win, and I know it.”

She has not competed since then because of circumstances beyond her control, and no one can predict how she will hold up physically or emotionally, but it could still happen.

The waifish Baiul, abandoned by her father when she was 2, orphaned by the death of her mother at 13, and a world champion at 15, has lost some of her following in the last year. She still floats like a butterfly, but her jumps are inconsistent. Bonaly has all the tricks, but the judges have never warmed to her three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-ice-shavings attack. Chen is mechanical. Witt, a two-time gold medalist returning at 28, is figure skating’s past. Kwan is the future. Harding is the wild card.