FIGURE SKATING : Zayak Boldly Moves Back Into Prominence

It is not uncommon for figure skaters to receive standing ovations after performing their freestyle programs in competitions. Elaine Zayak received one before she began hers at the national championships last January in Detroit, where the challenge of recapturing past glory is appreciated.

When Zayak returned to training 11 months earlier at her practice rink in Monsey, N.Y., she was 27, at least 20 pounds overweight and had not entered a serious competition in nine years. When she left Detroit, she was perhaps the proudest fourth-place finisher in the sport’s history.

Thus encouraged, she will continue her comeback in the Hershey’s Kisses Pro-Am that begins tonight at the Sports Arena. Zayak, who turns 29 next week, will attempt to upset 13-year-old Michelle Kwan of Torrance, who had not celebrated her first birthday when Zayak won the national title in 1981.

Zayak’s re-emergence is no more improbable than her emergence. Although she lost part of her left foot in a lawn mower accident when she was 2, she became such a bold and energetic jumper that figure skating officials changed their rules to harness her.

One of the sport’s first blue-collar heroines, identified on billboards in her New Jersey hometown as “The Pride of Paramus,” she was only 16 when she became the world champion in 1982 after landing seven triple jumps, unprecedented at that time for women.

But her star fell as rapidly as it had risen, and by the winter of 1984, when she was sixth in the Sarajevo Winter Olympics, she was 18 going on 65, time to retire.

Her spontaneous smile, as much her trademark as her triple toe jumps, did not return during a short, unsatisfying professional career, and all most people within the sport knew about her for the next few years was that she had bought into a delicatessen in Ridgewood, N.J.

“It was the Ridgewood Gourmet Deli,” she said by telephone last week, easily identifiable by her high, little girl’s voice and thick New Jersey accent. “What made it gourmet was the stuffed cabbage I made the Slovakian way from my grandmother’s recipe.”

Zayak still swears by her stuffed cabbage, but not the restaurant business.

She was seeking a new career when she discovered an old one.

After the International Skating Union adopted a rule in 1992 that allowed professionals to regain their eligibility, Zayak filled out an application the next February and sent it to the U.S. Figure Skating Assn.

To report that USFSA officials did not take her seriously is an understatement, but even Zayak was not sure how seriously she wanted to be taken.

“When I heard the announcement that I was coming back on TV, I said, ‘Oh my God, does that mean I really have to do this?’ ” she said.

She told her coaches, Peter Burrows and Mary-Lynn Gelderman, that her only goal was to lose weight.

“I was just mush,” said Zayak, who confesses now to having put on those 20 unwanted pounds.

“She told us she had 30 pounds to lose,” Gelderman said. “We said, ‘Oh really? In which leg?’

“We weren’t surprised that she said she wanted to give it a shot. But we didn’t think she was capable of coming back and competing with the youngsters. We were placating her at that point.”

When Zayak realized no one--not even her own coaches--believed in her, her goal changed. Her comeback no longer was only a substitute for a diet. She became determined to prove the doubters wrong.

“Some people thought it was too late for me, and that became another motivation,” she said. “The more people who said I couldn’t do it, the more I wanted to do it.”

The USFSA did not assign Zayak to any of the various international events last fall or winter that U.S. competitors use to fine-tune their programs for the national championships, believing that it would not be fair if she took the place of younger skaters who had been participating in the sport without interruption.

Zayak, however, was invited to a competition in Vienna by organizers who thought she would be good for the box office.

“I thought I was going to be great,” she said.

She was not, failing to land even one triple jump.

“She jumped in the water, found it was deep and panicked,” Gelderman said. “I thought she would say, ‘All right, that’s it. At least, I have my body back.’ ”

Instead, Zayak headed straight for a telephone, called New York and entered a small competition that would be held there five days later.

“That changed my mind about her,” Gelderman said. “At that point, I really started to respect her tenacity.”

When Zayak skated onto the ice for her freestyle program in Detroit, as effervescent--and almost as slim--as she had been in her last national championships in 1984, she was 116 pounds of good news for a sport that needed some after the assault two days earlier on defending champion Nancy Kerrigan.

The capacity crowd at Joe Louis Arena was on its feet as soon as her name was announced and again after she performed a vibrant, almost flawless four-minute program that included four triple jumps. It was not technically as demanding as the programs performed by many of the other women, but through the tears, the fourth-place scores awarded her by the judges seemed to her like perfect 6.0s.

“I’ve loved Elaine since I first began coaching her when she was 11, but I never respected her as much as I did that night,” Gelderman said. “She worked harder for that fourth place than she did for all of her national and world championships medals.”

Will Zayak return for next year’s national championships?

“I don’t believe I’m saying this, but I think it’s a possibility,” Gelderman said.

Zayak’s agent, Michael Rosenberg of Palm Desert, said she has numerous options, including perhaps a tour that would open in September with Olympic women’s champion Oksana Baiul of Ukraine and world men’s champion Elvis Stojko of Canada.

“Elaine was yesterday’s news for a long time,” Rosenberg said. “But 12 years after she won her world title, she all of a sudden comes back as a bright face on the American skating scene. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Asked about her future, Zayak would say only that she would like to compete in another international event later this year. She is planning to add another triple jump to her repertoire.

“I don’t want to go out like I did last time, not feeling good about my skating,” she said. “I want to go out on top.”

If she does not enter the 1995 national championships, it will not be because U.S. figure skating officials discouraged her.

“No,” she agreed, “they’re being very nice to me now.”