‘94 WINTER OLYMPICS / LILLEHAMMER : Harding Appears Set to Go : Figure skating: After two bad days of practice, she lands three consecutive triple axels and says that her ankle is feeling better.

Every move Tonya Harding made in her two practices Sunday on the Olympic Amphitheatre’s training rink was dissected, analyzed and discussed by her coach, her choreographer, doctors, physiotherapists, figure skating officials, publicists, reporters and photographers. And when the day ended, they all declared her fit.

As a result, when the U.S. Figure Skating Assn. enters two names into the official draw today for this week’s Winter Olympic women’s figure skating competition, Harding’s will be one of them. Nancy Kerrigan’s will be the other.

There was some doubt about Harding after two consecutive days of dismal practices, including one Saturday that she left in tears while music from one of her programs was still playing. USFSA team leader Gale Tanger wrapped an arm around her and gently coaxed her to return.

Tanger said later that the USFSA would monitor Harding’s practices Sunday to determine whether her difficulties were the result of a sore right ankle, which has caused her sporadic pain since she suffered a sprain in October.

Suggesting that the source of the problem was psychological, her coach, Diane Rawlinson, said Saturday: “She’s feeling the pressure. She’s feeling very insecure about being here and having everyone see her as the villain.”

Meantime, with so much attention focused on Harding, Kerrigan has faded into the background. She has even escaped the security net surrounding the athletes’ village to attend a couple of speedskating events and a hockey game without being mobbed.

Her coach, Evy Scotvold, declared Sunday that she is one of three favorites to win the gold medal in the competition that will begin Wednesday with the technical program and conclude Friday with the freestyle program. He declined to identify the other two.

“This (episode) has made her stronger and very determined,” he said. “If she just stays calm, she’ll have a fun week.”

Asked how he could make sure she remains calm, he said: “If I knew how to do that, I’d make even more money than Nancy.”

Of Harding’s program, he said: “I haven’t watched her program. I don’t think she’s done one since she’s been here.”

She kept that record intact Sunday, but Harding, notoriously pedestrian in practice, rarely performs complete technical or freestyle programs until she competes.

She hit only one rough spot in her early afternoon practice, missing two jumps in a row and then stepping gingerly over to the sideboard, where her support group, which includes Rawlinson and Rawlinson’s husband, Dennis, and choreographer Erica Bakacas, offered encouragement. While Tanger spoke to Harding, Bakacas caressed the skater’s forearm.

Harding ended the practice pumping her fist after landing a triple axel, the most demanding of the triple jumps and one that only she and Japan’s Midori Ito have done in women’s competition.

“We’re happy,” Rawlinson said, revealing that Harding’s emotional turmoil in practice Saturday stemmed from a photo on the front page of a foreign newspaper showing Harding topless. She had seen it only that morning.

In between practices, Harding was fitted for a new freestyle-program dress that the USFSA had designed for her. The sleeveless, deep purple dress she wore in winning the national championship last month in Detroit was considered so immodest that at least two judges penalized her with reductions in her scores.

“I think she needed something more Olympian, an Olympic dress,” Tanger said.

When Harding returned to the training rink for her afternoon practice session, she was in good spirits. She still did not perform her entire freestyle program but, at one point, landed three consecutive triple axels, a feat for any skater, man or woman.

As she left the ice, a reporter yelled a question about her ankle from the balcony.

“It’s all right,” she said. “It’s better.”

Tanger said Harding is undergoing daily ultrasound treatments for her ankle.

“But I don’t think her problem has been the ankle as much as it has been timing,” she said. “She’s getting her timing set to the size of the rink.

“I think she looked very good today. When you see the face of an athlete, and they look happy, you usually see a good practice following that. She was happy today.”

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Harding walked out of an interview with CBS correspondent Connie Chung after being asked questions about the fairness of judging she will face.

Harding became agitated when Chung persisted in asking her if she realized she was the center of attention not so much for her skating as for the investigation of her role in the attack on Kerrigan.

When Chung quoted two Czech judges as saying they would be influenced by Harding’s admission that she failed to immediately report what she knew about the attack, Harding removed her microphone and stormed out.

“I’m not going to answer that,” Harding said. “OK. I’m done. I’m done with this.”

The interview was scheduled for telecast on the “CBS Evening News” tonight. A transcript was provided by CBS in Lillehammer.

In the interview, Harding said she was taking painkillers for her injured ankle.

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Figure skater Michelle Kwan, 13, of Torrance, took time off from her training in a rink near Oslo to visit a modern art museum Saturday. But she was not catching up on culture as much as she was figure skating history.

The museum is the Henie-Onstad Art Center, which was founded by three-time Olympic figure skating champion Sonja Henie and her husband. Kwan was most interested in the room that contains dozens of medals and trophies won by Henie during her career from 1924-36.

“She had heard of Sonja Henie, but she didn’t know anything about her,” said Frank Carroll, who coaches Kwan at Lake Arrowhead’s Ice Castle International Training Center. “She thought she was American because of all her movies. She had no idea she was Norwegian.”

Because Kwan is an alternate in the women’s competition, she cannot live in the athletes’ village or train in the official practice rinks in Hamar. So the USFSA put her, her coach and her father up in a hotel and rented ice time for her in an Oslo suburb, about 60 miles south of Hamar.

“The people at the rink have been extremely cooperative,” Carroll said. “Since their rink is used mainly for ice hockey, the ice is very hard, like marble. But they turned the heat up so the ice would be softer just for us. They said the hockey players could live with it for a few days.”

Material from the Associated Press is included in this story.