LILLEHAMMER: ’94 WINTER OLYMPICS : Jansen Lays His Ghosts to Rest : Speedskating: They emerge when he slips during the 1,000 meters, but this time he doesn’t panic.

When U.S. speedskater Dan Jansen slipped while emerging from the next-to-last curve in Friday’s 1,000-meter race, ghosts of Olympics past flashed by his eyes.

That included a particularly horrifying one from last Monday, when a similar error in the curve at the other end of the Olympic Hall track diverted him from his gold-medal pace in the 500 meters and sent him into eighth place.

This time, however, he recalled advice that his coach, Peter Mueller, had given him moments before the race.

“He told me, ‘Don’t panic. Don’t try to get it back too fast,’ ” Jansen said. “So I just thought about holding it together and staying relaxed.”

He did, not only winning the elusive gold medal but setting a world record, 1 minute 12.43 seconds. It was the third world record set during the first week of the Winter Olympics on a track that is enhancing its reputation as the world’s fastest.

Jansen, 28, of Greenfield, Wis., became the first man to skate the 500 meters under 36 seconds, doing it twice in the same weekend on this track in December, and then did it twice more recently in Calgary, Canada, establishing himself as the overwhelming favorite for that race here.

But his Olympic trials and tribulations, which began in Calgary in 1988 when he fell in both the 500 and the 1,000 after learning of the death from leukemia of his sister, seemed fated to continue here after Monday’s disappointment.

When he finished fourth in the 500 in the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville, France, he followed that with a lackadaisical 26th-place finish in the 1,000.

“I deep down didn’t feel I had a chance in the 1,000,” he said Friday of his Albertville experience. “After the 500, I took off a couple of days and didn’t feel like skating.”

He vowed, however, that he would not quit this time.

Speedskating experts remained skeptical about his chances, for reasons having little to do with his previous Olympic collapses. Although he set the track record of 1:13.01 in December, seven other men in Friday’s race had skated faster, including Canadian Kevin Scott, who held the world record of 1:12.54.

Popular throughout the world because of his perseverance and his polite, soft-spoken demeanor, Jansen was the fan favorite as many among the capacity crowd of 12,000, including flag-waving, cowbell-carrying Norwegians, chanted his initials, “D.J., D.J., D.J.”

But the favorite among the experts was the once-dominant Igor Zhelezovsky, who now, nearing retirement, doubles as president of Belarus’ fledgling speedskating association. Scott was entered here, but not expected to contend because of a groin injury.

Zhelezovsky skated in the first pair with Russia’s Sergei Klevchenya, the silver medalist in the 500, and both broke the previous Olympic record, Zhelezovsky finishing in 1:12.72 and Klevchenya in 1:12.85.

Jansen, who skated in the fourth pair, believed then that he was going for the bronze medal.

“It sounds strange, but I wasn’t real confident going to the line because I didn’t feel like I was gripping the ice,” he said. “I said, ‘Don’t push the turn hard because you’re going to slip.’ ”

That, indeed, is what occurred, but he was able to maintain his balance by touching his hand to the ice. More important, he maintained his composure.

Among the 36 competitors who skated after him, no one came within a second of his time. Zhelezovsky finished second, Klevchenya third. Scott finished was 10th in 1:13.82.

Asked a few minutes after he finished his race what he was thinking when he saw the world-record time flashing on the scoreboard by his name, he said, “I don’t even know. I was shaking. I guess my first thought was, ‘Finally, it’s happened for me.’

“People expected me to win the 500, but not the 1,000. It worked out strange.”

Later, at a news conference that was interrupted by congratulatory phone calls from President Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton, Jansen said: “The whole day has yet to sink in, what happened and why it happened. It’s a dream. It’s something special that I can’t put into words.

“Right now, I’m probably happier for my family than I am for me. They have been coming to the Olympics with me, and I was supposed to win, and when I didn’t, they couldn’t celebrate. We’ll celebrate tonight.”

As for those who doubted him, he said, “I don’t have anything to say. If they doubted me, they didn’t know anything about skating. That means they’ve only been around at the Olympics.

“I’ve had so many world records, world championships and World Cup victories. This was the only thing left for me to do.”

One person who never doubted him was his favorite singer, Jimmy Buffett.

He sent Jansen a telegram Thursday night that said, simply, “Blow the Volcano.”

* BREAKTHROUGH

Dan Jansen streaks to a gold medal and a world record, leaving past Olympic failures behind. A1