It’s an Age-Old Debate on Ice

In assessing the ladies field this week at the U.S. figure skating championship, defending champion Nicole Bobek noted one difference in herself and all but a couple of her challengers. “I am a woman,” she said matter-of-factly.

Parents of teenagers might argue, but Bobek, who is all of 18, can be forgiven for feeling as if she is as long in the tooth and she is in her cherry-red fingernails.

It is a sport in which one of the contenders, Michelle Kwan, looks so young at 15 that she wears thick makeup to hide her age, and another, Tonia Kwiatkowski, looks so old at 24 that she . . . well, wears thick makeup to hide her age.

“Everyone is making me out to be so old, and I’m not that old,” Kwiatkowski protested.

The judges for Friday night’s short program before 10,571 at the San Jose Arena could not be accused of age discrimination. Entering today’s free skate, which accounts for two-thirds of the final score, Kwan is first, Kwiatkowski second and Bobek third.

But beyond that, they must wonder if they are judging candidates for the Winter Olympics in 1998 or 2002. Fourth-place Sydne Vogel is 16, fifth-place Tara Lipinski is 13, sixth-place Karen Kwan is 17, and seventh-place Angela Nikodinov is 15.

Age has become the major theme in the season of Michelle Kwan of Torrance, who, even though only 15, is already skating in her fourth senior nationals. After she finished fourth in the world last year, coming off her second consecutive runner-up performance at the national championships, judges hinted that they might have placed her even higher if she had not looked so much like a 14-year-old.

So her coach at Lake Arrowhead, Frank Carroll, made her over for this season, adding sophistication to her look and style. She had plenty of both Friday, earning first-place votes from seven of nine judges while skating as a flamenco dancer and will return today as the seductive Salome in a dance of seven veils.

Some critics have complained that she is growing up too fast, looking older than big sister Karen, but Michelle said: “I’m very comfortable. I always had an image in my mind, and this is better than I hoped for.”

Inducted into the U.S. Figure Skating Hall of Fame on Friday, Carroll probably deserves some credit for knowing what he’s doing. He said that he did not force Kwan to mature as much as he allowed it.

“Nature came along and changed a lot,” he said. “Sometimes 12- and 13-year-olds don’t look the same at 15. Her body changed and her face changed, and we went along with the flow. The changes made were apropos of her age. It’s not a Pygmalion sort of change.”

And no matter how advanced Kwan appears on the ice, she is not likely to surpass Bobek in that area in the near future. Bobek’s new coach, Barbara Roles Williams, presumably joking, said this week that she enticed the national champion to her rink in Las Vegas by promising her a role in “Nudes on Ice.”

*

Figure Skating Notes

Shelby Lyons, 14, returned to the rink about 14 hours after finishing third in the senior pairs competition with Brian Wells and won the junior girls’ championship Friday. Lyons and her family moved from Oswego, N.Y., to Colorado Springs, Colo., so that she can train with Coach Kathy Casey. They live in a one-bedroom apartment and Shelby sleeps in a large walk-in closet. . . . Besides Coach Frank Carroll, others inducted into the U.S. Figure Skating Hall of Fame were Brian Boitano, Judy Blumberg, Michael Seibert, Joseph L. Serafine and Jane Vaughn Sullivan.