The Bad Girl of Skating : U.S. Champion Is Trying to Live Down Reputation as She Takes On World in England

The Bobek Wall, as it has been christened by the American figure skating press corps, can be found at the rear of the media workroom at the National Exhibition Center, festooned with photocopies of the best of British tabloid journalism.

Come spend a few minutes with the reigning champion of U.S. women’s figure skating.

A headline: “BAD GIRL BOBEK TO TAKE CENTRE STAGE”

Another: “GOLDEN GIRL WHO SLIPPED UP ON THIN ICE”

One more: “HERALD OF THE TONYA EFFECT”

The wall beckons with teasing references to “the new Tonya Harding” and “troubled chain-smoking skating champ.” One profile, from the Observer, begins:

“Nicole Bobek, America’s newest ice princess, is a self-styled ‘free spirit,’ a cigarette-smoking, drinking, bed-swapping, long-legged 17-year-old Madonna who was arrested last November for ‘house invasion’ and has been discarded by a series of the US’s top coaches as ‘unmanageable.’ And she’s headed this way.”

Well, well.

No wonder the TV ratings for women’s figure skating have gone through the roof.

Bobek has been in England a week for the World Figure Skating Championships and, to the astonishment of many, Birmingham continues to stand. Until Friday, she had spoken once to reporters, immediately after Monday’s qualifying round in a group quickie that was more tightly monitored than a Gulf War press briefing, with no questions except “those concerning her participation here” permitted.

Afterward, she was sequestered by her coach, Richard Callaghan, who, until Friday’s competition, allowed her outside her hotel room only for daily practice sessions and an occasional meal.

Callaghan is Bobek’s eighth coach in eight years, an assignment he accepted last summer because, he jokes, “Maybe I was the last one available.”

Actually, Callaghan knows why.

“I’m supposed to have a reputation as a very strict disciplinarian,” he says bemusedly. “I say I’m mellow. Everybody else, though, thinks I’m tough.”

Jana Bobek decided to send her daughter to Stalag Callaghan for much the same reason 12-year-old hell-raising boys are dispatched to military school. At 17, Nicole was approaching the now-or-never phase of her skating career. She was already three years older than the heir apparent to Nancy Kerrigan, Michelle Kwan, and for all her raw potential, she had won only two senior titles--at the 1991 Olympic Festival and the 1991 Vienna Cup.

Considerably longer was “her reputation,” a phrase that has a habit of creeping into every conversation about Bobek.

Her reputation, the condensed version:

--A party girl with a voracious sexual appetite, a social killer bee who is said to have entertained certain American male skaters with something other than her triple salchow. According to one of her former coaches, a training session in New England brought “every teen-age boy on Cape Cod” to the practice rink three days after Bobek arrived.

--An undisciplined product of a broken home who never knew her father and was raised, in various points around the globe, by her mother and a female companion--her live-in aunt, the young Nicole was told.

--An unpredictable, capricious personality who didn’t know the meaning of the word curfew and gave the U.S. Figure Skating Assn. fits at international competitions. At least twice after such events, the USFSA has filed reports about Bobek’s alleged misbehavior, and at a pre-Olympic training trip to Norway, the USFSA insisted that her coach at the time, Kathy Casey, room with Bobek.

--An underachieving skater who hates to practice, likes to smoke, indulges in junk food and has a fondness for “tough-girl” street fashion that consistently annoys the officials of the USFSA. Off the ice, Bobek can often be seen wearing a ring on every finger, which has earned her the Tonya-esque sobriquet of “Brass Knuckles.”

Recently, the portfolio was enlarged with a felony charge of house invasion. Last Nov. 2, Bobek was found alone in the Bloomfield, Mich., home of a skating friend, near the Detroit Skating Club, where Bobek trains. The friend’s father contends that he found Bobek in the house by herself with a large sum of money. The father maintains the money had been missing from the house.

Bobek’s version of the story is that the home was a well-known “party house” among her circle of friends; that it could be entered with an electronically coded password and that she and several others knew the password. Bobek has admitted being in the house--”I was in the wrong place at the wrong time”--but denies taking any money.

In January, Bobek and her lawyer, Michael Friedman, entered a guilty plea of unlawful entry. As a juvenile offender, she was given two years’ probation and a nightly curfew and assigned 50 hours of community service. One condition of the plea was confidentiality. According to Michigan law, once a juvenile offender completes probation, charges are dropped and records are sealed.

Late last month, Bobek upset Kwan at the U.S. nationals in Providence, R.I., and days later, news of the plea was leaked--by a former or rival coach, Friedman believes.

Once the case was made public, Judge David Breck of Michigan’s Oakland County Circuit court dismissed the charges and released Bobek from her probation. The Oakland County prosecutor’s office is contemplating an appeal.

Lugging this baggage into a packed interview room on Monday, Bobek took a seat behind the microphone, feigned astonishment at the sight of so many panting English news hounds and proceeded to read nervously from a prepared statement:

“I’d like to start by saying the last two weeks have been very difficult for me and I have grown a lot as a result.

“All of you are aware of the things that have been brought up in the media, and I’d like to say that there is nothing new. Thanks to Mr. Callaghan, I have been able to put this behind me and focus my efforts on training for the World Championships.

“With the support of my fellow U.S. team members, I continue to feel positive about representing the U.S. in these championships.”

With that, a USFSA official instructed the room to confine all questioning to toe loops and scores for technical merit.

Callaghan chaperoned this marvelously choreographed event, sitting elbow to elbow with Bobek.

Bobek was asked about winning at the national championships and what changes she had to make to get there.

“I’ve been growing up,” she replied. “I’m listening more. Having Todd Eldredge skate on the same ice with me (Callaghan also coaches Eldredge) has shown me a lot, what it takes to be a champion.

“Mr. Callaghan, basically, has been guiding me the right way and I’m doing whatever he says.”

Bobek then swept her head around to look up at Callaghan, bat her eyelashes and coo, “Haven’t I?”

This brought howls of laughter from the news hounds and the next day, the Bobek Wall was adorned with declarations of Bobek “breaking the ice in style” and “cutting a shy figure that belies her ‘bad girl’ problems.” Now, according to the local papers, Bobek was “a stunning blonde” with a “colourful background” who “had softened us all up brilliantly.”

The next day, Callaghan remarked that he thought Bobek did a great job with that news conference:

“I think she really cleared the air for herself.”

He said he understands Bobek’s story “is a great subject” but mainly because the words figure skating champion are now appended to the bio of a 17-year-old girl.

“She’s not allowed to have one toe over the line,” Callaghan said. “A normal teen-ager can have the whole foot over the line, and then some, and nobody says a thing.”

Callaghan described Bobek as a 17-year-old girl who likes boys.

“So Nicole likes boys,” he said. “Keep reading, though. Maybe next week, it’ll be girls.”

The Tonya II hype, Callaghan claims, is unfair to Bobek.

“She calls herself a free spirit, which she is, and that helps make her a good skater,” he said.

“As long as she does the work, as long as she goes out and performs, her lifestyle belongs to her. No matter what she does--if she smokes, if she has a lot of boyfriends, if she’s had an up-and-down family life--if she completes a perfect program on the ice, what am I going to do, complain?

“If she was doing anything to the point of excess, she wouldn’t be the U.S. ladies’ champion.”

John Nicks, coach of the bronze medal-winning U.S. pair Jenni Meno and Todd Sand, has spent nearly half a century in figure skating and says he has never seen anything in the sport comparable to Tonya ‘94--including Nicole ’95.

“After last year, this is rather small potatoes, wouldn’t you say?” Nicks said, laughing.

“I get the feeling that the ice-skating community was ashamed--no, not ashamed, but maybe surprised and disappointed about what happened last year. I can understand that, but I try to explain to everybody, ‘If you’re going to be a major sport, it’s going to happen.’ No other major sport exists without unpleasant times and unpleasant people.”

The sport has to grow up, Nicks is saying. The same goes for Nicole Bobek. The two of them happen to be doing it together, side by side, and they are doing in full public view. No one ever said it was going to be easy.