‘94 WINTER OLYMPICS / LILLEHAMMER : Russian Lands an Upset : Men’s skating: The bland, but technically superior Urmanov prevails. Boitano is sixth, Davis eighth.

In a competition so superb that three figure skaters destined for the sport’s Hall of Fame--Viktor Petrenko, Kurt Browning and Brian Boitano--finished fourth, fifth and sixth, the only man among the top seven who inspired no passion won the gold medal.

It was not a particularly controversial decision except perhaps in Canada and France, the home countries of the silver and bronze medalists, because the new Winter Olympic champion, Russia’s Alexei Urmanov, skated very well technically, so well that a majority of the judges were willing to overlook his bland presentation.

Canada’s Elvis Stojko and France’s Philippe Candeloro, in contrast, brought virtually all of the 6,000 spectators who filled the Olympic Amphitheatre Saturday night to their feet, seeming to impress everyone except the prevailing judges.

Perhaps in a winter when virtually every mention of figure skating in the media contains the words assault and grand jury , they were not ready for freestyle programs skated to movie theme music from “The Bruce Lee Story” and “The Godfather.” Stojko karate-kicked through the former, and Candeloro did everything but behead a horse in the latter.

Evidently preferred by six of the nine judges was the nonviolent approach of Urmanov, who gave them 4 1/2 minutes of long, clean lines and strong but understated jumps to music from Rossini. The other three judges split their first-place votes among Stojko, Candeloro and Petrenko.

Urmanov, 20, overcame considerable adversity to win. His father has disappeared, perhaps, according to his coach, to prison, while his mother lost her job in a munitions factory with the breakup of the Soviet Union, becoming a restaurant cook. Money has been so tight that Urmanov and his coach had to decide whether it was worth it to continue in the sport after the skater broke his ankle in April of 1992.

His ankle is still not completely healed, but he is a better skater now than he was before because of it. In 1992, he became the first man to land a clean quadruple jump in the Olympics, but he was considered a one-dimensional skater. No longer able to rely on his athleticism after the injury, he concentrated more on choreography.

Paul Wylie, who won the silver medal in 1992 and is here as a CBS commentator, suggested that there was more of the choreographer’s heart than Urmanov’s in the freestyle program.

Nevertheless, Urmanov was rewarded with his first victory in a major international competition.

Among those he beat were the last two Olympic champions, Boitano from 1988 and Ukraine’s Petrenko from 1992, and four-time world champion Browning. They eliminated themselves with uncharacteristic mistakes in Thursday night’s technical program, and, although they recovered nicely in the freestyle program, which accounts for two-thirds of the final score, they could not assert themselves into the medal race.

Boitano, who interrupted his lucrative professional career and returned at age 30 to serious competition, said he would make the same choice again today.

“One of my discoveries was that the hunger wasn’t there,” he said. “But that’s OK. It wasn’t the wrong decision.”

Disappearing was the man who beat Boitano in last month’s U.S. championships, Scott Davis, who entered the night in fourth place, fell twice and dropped to eighth. It was the first time since 1976 that no U.S. man won a medal.

Davis, 22, was one of the few men who did not skate well in the freestyle program. Urmanov, Stojko and Candeloro all landed seven triple jumps, but the Frenchman had the most intriguing, if perhaps a little overdone, program.

Going for the big finish, he planned the hardest of the triple jumps, a triple axel, for the end of his program and might have won if he had not over-rotated and fallen. After that, his gold-medal chances were sleeping with the fishes.