This Rivalry Is Looking Familiar

Tonya vs. Nancy, it’s not. But the emerging rivalry between the United States’ latest prima figure skaters, Nicole Bobek and Michelle Kwan, presents almost as many contrasts in substance and style, the most glaring of which appears to be their maturity. The 15-year-old Kwan might have more of it than the 18-year-old Bobek.

In the last month, Bobek made her ninth coaching change in the last nine years and alienated U.S. Figure Skating Assn. officials by inquiring about the possibility of an injury waiver into this year’s World Championships. They told her that she probably would not succeed down that avenue because she chose to skate on a lucrative, 16-show Nutcracker on Ice tour in December instead of remaining home to rehabilitate her sore ankle.

Most skaters would have difficulty coping with so much chaos entering the U.S. championships today through Saturday at the San Jose Arena. But Bobek, from Chicago but now training out of the Sante Fe Ice Arena in Las Vegas, proved last year that she is not like most skaters.

After making her eighth coaching change in eight years and with a two-year probation on a felony charge of home invasion (eventually dismissed on a technicality) hanging over her head, she won the U.S. championship and finished third in the world.

Frank Carroll, the only coach Kwan has had in six years at Lake Arrowhead’s Ice Castle International Training Center, said that Bobek flourishes under adversity.

“Never, ever count Nicole out,” he said.

Carroll learned that last year at Providence, R.I., where Kwan entered only her third national championship as an overwhelming favorite and finished as the runner-up for the second consecutive year after Bobek outperformed her. Bobek had finished third the year before.

He learned something else last year that has been even more important for Kwan’s progress. In a performance that a Skating magazine poll found to be the best of the season, Kwan skated her freestyle program almost flawlessly at the World Championships in Birmingham, England, but finished fourth overall because some judges did not believe she appeared sophisticated enough.

Carroll vowed that would not happen this year, supervising a complete makeover in her look, style and content. She now skates her freestyle program as Salome, whose seductive dance so pleased her stepfather, Herod Antipas, that he promised her anything she wanted. She chose the head of John the Baptist, which was delivered to her on a silver platter. Kwan, whose family oversees not a kingdom but a Chinese restaurant in Torrance, would be satisfied with a gold medal.

Critics in the media wailed that Carroll had turned Kwan into a vamp, but he argued that Salome also was only 15 when she performed her famous dance of seven veils. He had more ammunition when Kwan won all three international competitions she has entered this season, including a victory over the top three finishers from last year’s World Championships--China’s Lu Chen, France’s Surya Bonaly and Bobek--at Skate America in Detroit. She also beat Bobek at the Nations Cup in Germany.

So Kwan again enters the national championships as an overwhelming favorite, although she no longer takes that seriously.

“Last year taught me that being the favorite doesn’t mean you’re going to win,” she said.

In fact, she and Bobek probably will provide the most compelling competition of the week when they finally are permitted onto the ice Friday and Saturday. Last year’s champions in dance, Renee Roca and Gorsha Sur of Colorado Springs, Colo.; pairs, Jenni Meno and Todd Sand of Costa Mesa, and men’s singles, Todd Eldredge of Detroit, are expected to repeat.

Eldredge, 24, won his first two national championships in 1990 and ‘91, then did not finish among the medalists for three years before returning to the top of the podium in ’95. He has skated his entire career under Richard Callaghan, who had the rare distinction of coaching both individual champions last year.

But, citing physical and emotional stresses, Bobek left him the week before Christmas for Barbara Roles Williams, who coached her between the ages of 10 and 12.

“Strange things happen in this sport, and they will continue to happen,” Callaghan said.