Nari Nam Comes of Age, but She’s Not Quite Worldly

The future couldn’t be brighter for Naomi Nari Nam. Or more uncertain either.

Figure skating’s newest star was born Saturday night at the Delta Center. Nari Nam, daughter of an Irvine avionics engineer, oldest of three and a child so stubborn that her coach, John Nicks, said he couldn’t talk his prodigy out of using music that Michelle Kwan had made famous last year, lit up the arena brighter than a skyrocket on the Fourth of July.

After having taken a sickening fall during her short program Thursday night, one so hard that the 13-year-old’s head bounced hard off the ice, nobody knew what to expect from this 4-foot-10 nymph who was participating in her first senior nationals.

What the crowd, the officials from the U.S. Figure Skating Assn. and every coach of every other skater saw was an electric performance, four minutes of skating, both flamboyant and graceful, charismatic and energizing. Skating that moved Nari Nam from fourth after the short program to second overall. Skating that is going to cause some controversy in the sport’s world governing body, the International Skating Union (ISU), because as the rules stand now, Nari Nam is ineligible to compete for the United States at the world championships this year and next.

The United States can send three women to the world championships next month in Helsinki, Finland, but Nari Nam won’t be one of them. Meanwhile, another 13-year-old, Sarah Hughes, who finished fourth, will be going.

While Hughes is less than two months older than Nari Nam, she was able to skate at last year’s junior world championships, where she finished second. The three medalists at the junior worlds are exempt from the age restriction for senior worlds. Nari Nam missed by five days being eligible for those junior worlds. And now, without a change in the rules, Nari Nam won’t be able to skate at the 2000 world championships either.

Unless . . .

Nicks, Nari Nam’s coach, calls these age restrictions “a deplorable instance of age discrimination,” and said that he expects the U.S. Figure Skating Assn.to petition the ISU for a change in the rules before next year.

Morry Stillwell, past president of the USFSA, said the organization “tomorrow” will be making pleas to the ISU about rejiggering the rules, though there will be plenty of European representatives unwilling to aid the United States in benefiting a possible future American champion.

For this year the U.S. will have to settle for Kwan, Hughes and 18-year-old Angela Nikodinov of San Pedro to compete at the world championships. Nicks says it will hurt Nari Nam “a lot, and more importantly it will hurt the United States,” to miss this and the next world championships.

On this night, though, Nari Nam was on a cloud so high that thoughts of missed world championships would not reach her.

By the end of her long program, which was skated to the same Rachmaninoff piano selections that had become so associated with Kwan during last year’s Olympic season, most of the 6,571 in attendance were standing before Nari Nam stopped spinning.

“I felt so good,” Nari Nam said, “I wanted to stay out there. I wished I could stop time and freeze.”

On Thursday night, when Nari Nam had fallen on a triple jump and hit her head so hard, the little skater said she thought about not continuing. “I was thinking if I should stop or if I should go on,” Nari Nam said, “and I thought I should go because it’s not very good stopping in the middle of the program and I wanted to show them that I am tough and I could do it. I was thinking a lot. I had to think quickly.”

By continuing, by skating to the finish on Thursday, by skating so furiously and fabulously on Saturday, Nari Nam also has changed her life immediately.

All over the world now, everyone will know that Naomi has a 9-year-old sister named Naomi Nami Nam; that she has a 4-year-old brother named David; that her grandfather, Byong Hwa Choe, was a speed skater in North Korea who escaped to South Korea and who followed Naomi’s parents, David and Connie, to the United States; that it was her speedskating grandfather who first brought the 5-year-old Naomi to the skating rink.

Nari Nam will be introduced to agents-in-waiting, though Nicks says he will not coach a skater who has an agent; she will be courted by all the ice shows and will be a popular invitee to pro-ams.

First, though, Nari Nam must become sure enough of the triple lutz, the second hardest of the triple jumps and one necessary to do well at world championships, to please the persnickety Nicks and be included in her long program. She also needs to add a triple-triple combination jump to her repertoire. Nicks says Nari Nam is close to perfecting both of those tricks.

This is all for the future, and let’s hope the future quickly allows for the arrival of Nari Nam. Nari Nam laughed Saturday night and said that, yes, she wishes she could change the date of her birth. That’s impossible. But not much else seems to be for the newest star.

Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com.