Flawed Effort From Judges?

The defending German world champions skated with too much caution, the reigning European champions from Russia stumbled and fell, leaving the door open, tauntingly, for an American pair to hurtle through.

So on Sunday night during the Olympic figure skating pairs short program, Kyoko Ina and Jason Dungjen took their 2 minutes and 40 seconds and took their best shot.

The performance of a lifetime, their coach, Peter Burrows, would call it.

A performance that sent Ina flying off the ice into Burrows’ open arms for a triumphant twirl while Dungjen skated off pumping his fist in the air.

“They should have been first,” Burrows declared.

The German and Australian judges had them seventh.

The Polish judge had them sixth.

Altogether, the nine-judge panel placed Ina and Dungjen fourth, positioning them behind:

* Russians Oksana Kazakova and Artur Dmitriev, who bungled their death-spiral maneuver and still received 10 marks of 5.8 or better.

* Germans Mandy Woetzel and Ingo Steuer, who exhibited more guile than style as Steuer gutted out a performance with a right shoulder so sore it required a pain-killing injection before he stepped onto the ice.

* Russians Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze, who began their program with Sikharulidze turning a side-by-side triple toeloop into a one-man sit-down strike.

Each performance was flawed, without question. But each performance belonged to a pair with weightier international credentials than Ina and Dungjen, the 1997 and 1998 United States champions.

Dmitriev is a two-time Olympic medalist, winning gold in 1992 when he was teamed with Natalia Mishkutenok.

Woetzel and Steuer are reigning world champions.

Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze, 1998 European titlists, came to Japan touted as no worse than co-favorites for the gold medal.

Ina and Dungjen?

They are relative newcomers as international figure skating contenders, finally emerging from the shadow on American rivals Jenni Meno and Todd Sand in the last year. They placed ninth in the Lillehammer Olympic Games and have gradually lifted their showing at the world championships--from 12th in 1994 to eighth in 1995 to sixth in 1996 to fourth in 1997.

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“I thought the marks were low,” said an incensed Burrows, who trains Ina and Dungjen in Monsey, N.Y.

“They skated well. They were in the last group and they kicked a little tail.”

They completed all of their required elements cleanly and skated with more speed and poise than they have displayed in other major competitions. Their musical choice was a crowd-pleaser too--traditional Japanese Kodo drum music, which went over well with the audience at the White Ring arena.

So what was wrong with the performance?

Aside from Dungjen’s purple and black velvet costume, which appeared to have been stitched together from a painting of dogs in visors playing poker?

Burrows could not believe the seventh-place ratings from the German and Australian judges.

“I have no explanation,” Burrows said. “They must have been watching a different ballgame.”

John Nicks, who coaches Meno and Sand, empathized with Burrows.

“The judging was inconsistent with Dungjen and Ina--and that’s what we expect,” said Nicks.

Why?

“Judging is always inconsistent,” he said.

Nicks’ skaters placed sixth Sunday. Meno, competing for the first time since spraining her ankle at the U.S. championships in early January, seemed to skate without pain. But she and husband Sand completed a slow and unremarkable program, tinted the same hue as Meno’s lace-topped outfit.

Vanilla.

Ina had hoped for a better reception during this return to her birth country. Born 25 years ago in Tokyo, Ina competed briefly as a junior singles skater for Japan, even though her family had moved to New York during her infancy.

“We’re happy where we are [in the standings],” Ina insisted. “You can’t control the judges. You can only control what you do. . . .

“We did what we came to do--to skate clean. That is the only thing we can control. That’s one of the best feelings I’ve ever had, when it was all over.”

The leaders, meanwhile, were running the gamut from grouchy to relieved, but nothing more pleasant than that.

Kazakova and Dmitriev both lamented the blown death spiral. The maneuver, when performed correctly, involves the male skater spinning in a standing position while holding the hand of his partner, who spins in a horizontal position, as low to the ice as possible without touching it.

Kazakova never got very low on the spiral, as she and Dmitriev aborted the move before it could be properly completed.

“Not very good,” Dmitriev assessed afterward.

Steuer was still hurting from a December automobile accident in which he hyperextended his right shoulder. The injury forced Steuer to cut short a Sunday morning practice and endure a pain-killing injection by German doctors in order to complete the evening short program.

“I think the problem is the weather,” Steuer said. “The weather is changing--it was snowing. I could feel it in my shoulder.”

And Sikharulidze was in no mood at all to be quizzed about his pratfall coming out of the triple toeloop.

“It’s very funny,” he said without smiling. “A huge crowd and you sit on the ice.

“Very funny,” he added sarcastically. “Was for fun.”

Even with the fall, Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze remained in contention for a gold medal should they win Tuesday’s long program, a situation that didn’t sit right with Nicks.

“That’s an automatic 0.4 deduction,” Nicks said of Sikharulidze’s tumble.

“No, it’s a 0.3,” a reporter corrected.

“Well, it looked like a 0.4 to me,” Nicks replied. “It was a real banger.”