U.S. OLYMPIC FESTIVAL : Erin Sutton, 13, Skates Into the Limelight

It’s a tricky thing, this figure skating event at the U.S. Olympic Festival.

Since the Festival is in the summer and figure skating is a winter sport, most of the skaters are learning new routines. The Festival comes when skaters are caught between the previous season’s routine and the next one.

One is rusty, the other’s not quite ready.

But if you’re a skater, you do it. There’s no turning down the Festival as a junior skater.

The winner of the event can visualize an immediately successful career. The Festival has launched Tara Lipinski and Michelle Kwan to the next level in the past two years.

So when Erin Sutton, 13, of Northville, Mich., won the gold medal in the women’s singles competition Sunday, she was understandably thrilled.

“I’ve never felt like this after winning before,” Sutton said. “I was just hoping to place first, second or third. It means a lot because it’s my first junior competition.”

If she keeps it up, there won’t be many more.

Smiling as if embarrassed by winning, and speaking in a soft voice, Sutton was asked if she was ready to follow in the footsteps of Kwan and Lipinski, who have had very few setbacks since winning the Festival.

“Yeah, um, I guess so.”

She is, even if it hasn’t hit her yet. She upset some pretty good competition.

One was Sydne Vogel, a 16-year old from Anchorage, who wowed the figure skating world in winning the Junior Championships earlier this year. She won that event in convincing fashion over Lipinski.

Others included Amy D’Entremont, who was a crowd favorite because of her fast, flamboyant style and the fact that she trains in Colorado Springs for most of the year, and Brittney McConn, who finished third at the Junior Championships behind Vogel and Lipinski.

And then there’s Angela Nikodinov of San Pedro, who led after the short program and was the one Sutton thought would win the gold.

But with numerous falls and tentative landings by the competition, Sutton emerged as the winner with a solid, if not the most flamboyant, routine. Sutton won the gold with a factored place score of 2.5. McConn won the silver (3.0) and D’Entremont won the bronze (6.0).

Perhaps the most disappointing finish was by Vogel, who had to have her hip drained of fluid before the competition started. She finished sixth after falling once on the first day of competition and three times on the second day. Her hip developed soreness and fluid after she fell on it several times during practice.

“I might have been a little more cautious because of my hip,” said Vogel, who wore padding on the hip for protection. “But it didn’t really bother me. When I fell [in the short program] it was unrelated to my injury. It was just a mistake. It happens sometimes.”

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Festival Notes

UCLA’s Toby Bailey was a late scratch from the basketball competition. He told Festival officials that he could not join the team because he is enrolled in summer school. . . . Also in figure skating, Nicole Perry and Paul Dulebohn won the pairs competition. The brother and sister team of Tiffany and Johnnie Stiegler of Manhattan Beach were the fan favorites but finished second. . . . In boxing, Pedro Pena of Los Angeles beat Javier Munoz in a 26-19 decision to advance to the light-flyweight final. In a featherweight semifinal, Frank Carmona of Los Angeles won a 19-11 decision over Mark Burse.