This Time, Eldredge Takes Charge

It was the first night of the first major competition of the new figure skating season, and most of the competitors in Skate America performed down to expectations. The 1,571 spectators in the Springfield Civic Center must have wondered if they should have stayed home to watch television because this was not must-see skating.

Or at least it wasn’t until Todd Eldredge glided onto the ice and immediately took command of it, skating as cleanly and confidently as he did in winning the world championship last March in Edmonton.

Eldredge, 25, a three-time national champion who was reared in nearby Chatham, Mass., said that there was nothing special about his performance. But the judges disagreed, awarding him three 5.9s on a scale of 6.0 for required elements and five 5.9s for presentation.

None of the other competitors scored higher than 5.8 on either mark and most were so shaky that Eldredge will be difficult to overtake in Saturday’s long program. Russia’s Alexei Urmanov, 1992 Olympic champion, is second and Japan’s Takeshi Honda third.

The women, including world champion Michelle Kwan of Torrance, start today with their short programs. In the opening programs of other competitions Thursday, the United States’ Shelby Lyons and Brian Wells lead in pairs and Russia’s Angelika Kyrlova and Oleg Ovsiannikov lead in dance.

Indicative of the difficulties that most skaters had, Russia’s Oksana Kazakova and Artur Dmitriev made three major errors in pairs, surprising considering Dmitriev is a former Olympic and world champion with another partner, and still are in second place.

“It’s a new program, one we’ve just skated two times in practice with all the elements,” Dmitriev said, excusing himself. “I’m not shocked. It’s OK.”

That was more or less the attitude of all the skaters except for Eldredge. Skating to music from “Walk on the Wild Side,” he did precisely that by placing his scratch spin, usually reserved for the climax, about a minute from the end of the program and then continuing, closing with a double axel.

“That gets the audience going,” he said. “Usually, they expect the spin at the end. To throw it in the middle throws them off, mixes it up so everything doesn’t seem the same all the time.”

Eldredge seems intent on avoiding last season’s embarrassment, when he allowed commercial interests to interfere with his competitive schedule and lost his national title to Rudy Galindo.