Go Figure

Let’s see now:

Michelle Kwan is a millionaire from her sport, and she’s aiming for the Winter Olympics next year.

Oksana Baiul is a millionaire from her sport, and she’s not allowed anywhere near the Winter Olympics.

Looks like figure skating is in midseason form.

The days when you could tell an Olympic athlete simply by their meager bankbooks are long gone. But the rules on who is eligible for the richest, most popular event in the Winter Games are hard to untangle.

And the sport that brought the world Tonya and Nancy, that glories in sequins and eyeshadow -- on the men! -- one that has a rinkside spot officially known as “kiss and cry,” is about to display its warts once more.

With the world championships next week in Switzerland and the next Olympics less than a year away, some of the world’s best skaters find themselves shut out by a power struggle between professional promoters and officials who run the Winter Games’ competition.

“That’s the first question people ask me -- why can Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley compete in the Olympics, and you can’t,” said Paul Wylie, who won an Olympic bronze medal for the United States in 1992 and now makes millions on the professional tour.

Even some of those still eligible for the glory of gold medals wonder where their sport is going at a time when the public’s appetite for triple axels seems insatiable.

“This is all kind of a new world for everybody,” said Tonia Kwiatkowski, a 26-year-old veteran who finished sixth in her 10th and last national championships last month.

All this is quite a change from three years ago, when figure skating appeared to be just one big happy family that would get rich together.

Keeping with the trend of opening the Olympics to the world’s best athletes no matter how much money they make, the International Skating Union allowed athletes who had competed in ice shows and pro tournaments to re-apply for the 1994 Winter Games.

With a unique two-year window between the Winter Olympics, many of the top pros, including Katarina Witt, Brian Boitano and Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean, suddenly declared themselves Olympians again. Although only T&D; among the returnees even came close to a medal, the Olympic tournament in Lillehammer could declare itself the greatest show on ice.

It also was one of the highest-rated sports events in TV history, spurred in part by the scandal involving Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan, U.S. teammates and arch rivals. TV networks and independent producers chased skaters with open checkbooks, and the skaters jumped at the money.

Baiul, the orphan from Ukraine who edged Kerrigan for the women’s gold medal, quickly went pro and said she had no intention of asking for another Olympic chance in Nagano.

Pairs champions Katerina Gordeeva and Sergei Grinkov did the same, while Witt, Boitano, Torvill and Dean and other erstwhile pros all bid the Olympics goodbye.

“The ISU sought to control the sport,” said Wylie, currently touring with Discover Stars on Ice. “They thought the professional skaters would all try to regain their Olympic eligibility and stay there, and everyone would be happy.”

To try to prevent a wholesale defection of younger skaters, the ISU took two steps.

First, it allowed skaters to win prize money and remain eligible for the world championships and Olympics. That’s how Kwan can win $1 million from skating and still defend her world title.

But the ISU, an old-line sports federation where change usually comes very slowly needed to impose its will, too.

It said skaters could retain Olympic eligibility only by skating exclusively in events sanctioned by the ISU and its member federations, such as the U.S. Figure Skating Association. They also could compete only against skaters who had the approval of their own country’s federation.

“We don’t want to become an international federation dedicated to ineligible-skater activity,” ISU president Ottavio Cinquanta said. “We are mainly dedicated to the eligible skaters.”

So, when promoters for “Too Hot to Skate” prepared to tape their star-studded TV special in Las Vegas last October with USFSA approval, they thought they had it made -- until one of their biggest stars showed up.

Phillippe Candeloro, the 1994 Olympic bronze medalist from France, was denied permission to compete in “Too Hot” by the French skating federation. Candeloro thought seriously about turning pro on the spot, but that would have forced the USFSA to pull its biggest names, including world champions Kwan and Todd Eldredge.

“We had no choice but to say, if he skates without French permission, pro or not pro, our skaters won’t skate,” USFSA president Morry Stillwell said. “Because if we didn’t do that, we were going to be in big-time trouble with the French and the ISU.”

The conflict doesn’t involve just world-class skaters.

At a pro tournament in Milwaukee last September, the USFSA sent promoter Chris Cichy a last-minute bill. It wanted a “sanction fee” of $1,000 for any of the flower girls -- kids who skate onto the ice to retrieve bouquets and other gifts -- who might be enrolled in federation programs.

Cichy’s counteroffer of $100 was refused, and he had to replace the youngsters with other skaters who had no federation connections.

“While somebody may feel that a little kid, five little kids, are not worth the difference between $100 and $1,000, that’s the way it is,” Stillwell said. “I feel there is a moral responsibility to help develop the sport.”

In the meantime, the potential Olympic field is bare of returning pros. Only four world-class skaters applied for reinstatement by the time the Nagano window closed in April 1995 -- 1992 women’s silver medalist Midori Ito of Japan, three-time Canadian women’s champion Josee Chouinard and 1993 ice-dance world champions Maia Usova and Alexander Zhulin. All have since given up their eligibility.

Wylie, for one, is not surprised.

“I was hoping four years ago that people would realize it was time to bridge the gap. But it seems that was only temporary,” he said. “Don’t try to make sense of it. It doesn’t make sense.”