WORLD SPORTS SCENE : Figure Skaters Kwan and Bobek Try a New Look

Although there have been a couple of made-for-television competitions this fall, the figure skating season begins in earnest with Skate America International on Thursday through Sunday at Detroit. The women’s field is particularly competitive, with entries of the top four finishers from last winter’s World Championships: Chen Lu of China, Surya Bonaly of France, Nicole Bobek of Chicago and Michelle Kwan of Torrance.

Kwan, 15, has grown two inches and gained six pounds since the World Championships. Coach Frank Carroll said he hopes the more mature looking skater, with some new programs and costumes, will sway the judges.

Bobek also is expected to feature new routines.

“It’s good to get new material out and see how the crowd responds to it,” said her coach, Richard Callaghan. “It helps us know if we need to make adjustments.”

Callaghan, who also coaches Todd Eldredge, said the skaters do not have seasons anymore because so many competitions are scheduled. He called this week’s event “just another meet.”

Skate America is the first of six competitions in the Champions Series of Figure Skating, the sport’s new version of an international grand prix. About $2 million in prize money is available.

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In the second of three scheduled hearings to examine the Amateur Sports Act of 1978, a Senate committee last week focused on a recent report in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the U.S. Olympic Committee dedicated only one-fifth of 1% of its $414 million budget during the current four-year period to grass-roots organizations such as the YMCA and Boys & Girls Clubs.

In defense of his organization, USOC President LeRoy Walker said that it cannot adequately support elite Olympic and Pan American Games athletes as well as the nation’s physical education needs that have been largely abandoned by public schools.

“We are making strong efforts in all these areas,” he said. “The fact remains, however, that we cannot be all things to all people with limits on our financial resources.”

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Boxer Carlos Navarro of Los Angeles, No. 1 in the nation at 119 pounds and No. 2 pound-for-pound in rankings released by USA Boxing, is moving up to the 125-pound featherweight division. He won last summer’s U.S. Olympic Festival even though he was weakened by having to lose nine pounds the day before his semifinal and final matches to make weight.

“I’ll be quicker and stronger at 125,” he said. “The only thing I ate the day before [the Festival fights] was air.”

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Tour de France organizers made major changes in the 1996 course by adding additional mountain stages to the already grueling three-week event. Why? The most logical answer is that organizers wanted a more competitive race in what is expected to be Miguel Indurain’s last good year of racing.

Indurain, 31, will be trying to win an unprecedented sixth Tour. His forte is the flat individual time trial in which few have come close to him in recent years. The additional mountain climbs might be a disadvantage to the Spaniard.

And it just so happens that the change comes at a time when France has a strong challenger in Laurent Jalabert, who was fourth last year, but the strongest climber. Jalabert took over the top ranking from Indurain in the International Cycling Union this year.

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Cyclists criticized a new velodrome track constructed for the 1996 Olympic Games, describing it as slow and sticky. Asked if it’s likely that any world or Olympic records would be set next summer on the track, U.S. rider Adam Laurent said, “Absolutely, positively not. No way.”

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Some expenses the city of Atlanta will incur during the 1996 Summer Games that will be reimbursed by the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games, according to city officials:

* Police: $7 million

* Fire: $1.24 million

* Parks: $173,443

* Sanitation: $211,960

* Courts: $2,408

World Scene notes

Benita Fitzgerald, gold medalist in the 100-meter hurdles during the 1984 Summer Olympics at Los Angeles, has been appointed director of the USOC’s new training center at Chula Vista. . . . Figure skater Tara Lipinski of Sugarland, Tex., who won the Festival in 1994 but was upset in the junior nationals this year by Sydne Vogel of Anchorage, is back on top after finishing first in qualifying for next month’s world junior championships. Vogel did not qualify, finishing third. . . . Mark Lenzi, a gold-medalist diver in 1992 who is attempting a comeback after retiring for three years, might be stopped short by a shoulder injury. . . . Synchronized swimmer Suzannah Bianco on the necessity of combining athleticism with the artistry in her sport: “If we were out there gasping and spitting water and looking like we were going to drown, we wouldn’t be anything to watch.”

Times staff writer Randy Harvey contributed to this story.