Uphill Battle Continues for Ice Dancing in U.S.

Ice dancing has an image problem in the United States.

Of the four Olympic figure skating disciplines, it’s the least understood. There are no spectacular jumps, as in men’s and women’s singles. There are no dangerous throws and twisting overhead lifts, as in pairs.

And nobody ever tried to club a rival ice dancer’s knee.

“It’s a cultural problem,” said John LeFevre, executive director of the U.S. Figure Skating Assn. and a former dance competitor and referee.

“You look at a father, a typical dad. Is he going to want his son to go into ice dancing or play football?

“In Europe, particularly in Russia, that cultural problem doesn’t really exist. Ice dance tends to emphasize music and art, and our culture doesn’t encourage that in males. We’ve had trouble getting males into the sport of figure skating, and ice dance in particular.”

Ice dancing can seem prissy because couples skate compulsory dances to prescribed patterns and to stodgy music such as the Silver Samba, Westminster Waltz, rumba and tango.

“I was actually embarrassed sometimes to tell people I was an ice dancer,” LeFevre said. “It’s a macho image thing.”

Since ice dancing became an Olympic sport in 1976, six of the seven gold medals have been won by skaters from the former Soviet Union. The exception was 1984, when Great Britain’s Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean defeated two Soviet couples at Sarajevo.

Not since Colleen O’Connor and Jim Millns won a bronze medal in 1976 has an American duo won a medal. The last Americans in the top three at the World Championships were Judy Blumberg and Michael Seibert, who won three consecutive bronzes from 1983-85.

“I don’t think ice dance is the weakest part of skating in the U.S.,” said Peter Tchernyshev, who teamed with Naomi Lang of Arcata, Calif., to win their third consecutive U.S. ice dance title last month. They also finished second at the Four Continents event in Salt Lake City, a test competition for the Winter Olympics.

“It’s just that the other disciplines are much stronger. We’re working on it.”

Getting men to compete long enough to perfect the techniques has been vexing. Charles Butler, who won two U.S. junior titles and one senior silver medal with Jessica Joseph, quit to attend college. Justin Pekarek and Jamie Silverstein, second in the U.S. last year, split over personal differences.

Because there are so few elite U.S. male ice dancers, U.S. women turn to foreign-trained partners. Tchernyshev, from St. Petersburg, Russia, became a U.S. citizen last month. In 1999, the top three U.S. ice dance duos featured two Russian men and one Briton. Oleg Fediukov, who combined with Debbie Koegel to win bronze in 1999 and 2000, is Russian. In the 1990s, Russian Gorsha Sur paired with Renee Roca to win two U.S. titles.

“Until we’re able to encourage more men to get into ice dancing from the beginning, not just overloaded singles skaters who don’t want to jump, and encourage couples to stay together, it’s going to be a struggle for us,” LeFevre said. “It’s difficult and it seems like it’s getting harder.”

LeFevre said the French figure skating federation decided several years ago to develop ice dancers and produced 2000 world champions Marina Anissina and Gwendal Peizerat.

The USFSA helps dancers find partners with annual tryouts and matchmaking through its Web site.

“If we can have just one super team, skaters would have someone to imitate,” LeFevre said. “We’ve had some, but they break up, and it’s very frustrating.”

STILL IN THE SWIM

Rick DeMont hasn’t given up on persuading the International Olympic Committee to clear his name, even though the IOC’s Juridical Committee reviewed but declined to take action on his case last week.

As a 16-year-old swimmer, DeMont won the 400-meter freestyle at the 1972 Munich Games but was stripped of his gold medal when a post-race urine test found traces of the banned drug ephedrine. He also was prohibited from competing in the 1,500, in which he held the world record.

DeMont, who has asthma, told U.S. Olympic Committee officials he was taking the prescription drug Marax, which contained ephedrine, but the IOC said it had not been informed. As part of a settlement with DeMont resolving a 1996 lawsuit, the USOC acknowledged last week that DeMont had disclosed his medical condition and use of Marax to its doctors but the information was not relayed to “the proper authorities at the IOC’s medical commission.”

The USOC will recognize DeMont’s achievements at its next board meeting, in April. His attorney, David Ulich of Los Angeles, said DeMont hopes for similar recognition from the IOC.

“I think the IOC meeting came too closely on the heels of the USOC’s announcement and didn’t give us time to line up support. Hopefully, we’ll get even more support,” Ulich said. “We’re in the process of soliciting support within the U.S. and from a couple of people within the IOC.

“We don’t think we’ll push for immediate return of the gold because that will generate controversy. At this point, we’d be happy with some acknowledgment Rick was a non-intentional doper.”

DeMont, an assistant swim coach at the University of Arizona, had pressed his suit against the USOC because his name was frequently linked to athletes who were found to have used performance-enhancing drugs. After Romanian gymnast Andreea Raducan lost her gold all-around medal last summer because she had been given a cold medicine that contained pseudoephedrine, a Sydney newspaper ranked DeMont second on a list of drug cheats behind sprinter Ben Johnson. DeMont met with USOC officials in November and made an emotional plea for redress.

“I think that may have made an impact,” he said. “Unless you’ve lived it, it’s hard to know. People say, ‘Why can’t you just get over it?’ It’s like having toilet paper stuck to my shoe. It won’t get off my shoe.

“It’s been hard on me. I was branded.”

GOING FOR GOLD, PART II

The women’s Olympic hockey tournament at Salt Lake City will expand to eight teams from the six that played in the inaugural tournament at Nagano in 1998.

However, it’s still likely that Canada and the U.S. will meet in the final, and the U.S. wouldn’t mind that. Canada had won the World Championships preceding Nagano, but the U.S. won Olympic gold and is favored to repeat.

“This time around, Team USA is not the underdog. That’s the position we were in at Nagano,” U.S. forward Cammi Granato said. “The pressure is on us.”

But circumstances are working in their favor.

“We’re training from September to April as a team, and we never had that before,” Granato said. “That’s going to help a lot.”

They can also draw on a larger talent pool because of the game’s growth in high schools and colleges. The skill level has risen since the first women’s World Championship in 1990.

“The skill, size, speed, strength and knowledge of the game are much better,” forward Karyn Bye said. “It’s a huge difference. There’s a lot more women and girls playing hockey too. We’ve made a huge jump and I hope we continue to grow.”

Since Nagano, Team USA Coach Ben Smith has reconfigured his roster considerably.

“There’s a war of attrition and the metamorphosis of players,” he said. “But we’re probably at a stage now, a year out, where we’re probably a little more cohesive than we were in ’97 a year before Nagano.”

HERE AND THERE

Four U.S. men have won individual medals in short track speedskating, a good omen for next year’s Olympics. The medal winners are Apolo Anton Ohno, the overall World Cup champion; Rusty Smith of Sunset Beach, who won a bronze in the 500 meters at Graz, Austria, last week; Dan Weinstein of Brookline, Mass., who won gold in the 1,000 at Graz; and Adam Riedy of Lakewood, Ohio, who won bronze in the 1,000 at Graz.

Canadian figure skater Elvis Stojko, a three-time world champion and two-time Olympic silver medalist, will skate in an exhibition next weekend to determine if his injured knee has healed well enough for him to compete in next month’s world championships at Vancouver, Canada. . . . Mogul skiers Travis Ramos of South Lake Tahoe and Hannah Hardaway of Moultonborough, N.H., were promoted to the U.S. Freestyle A team. They recorded the first World Cup event victories last month.

King defenseman Mattias Norstrom said the Swedish hockey federation apologized to him and Edmonton Oiler goalie Tommy Salo for threatening them with a two-year ban from international competition for refusing to take a urine test after an informal workout in Stockholm last summer. According to an agreement between the NHL, the NHL Players Assn. and the International Ice Hockey Federation, drug tests can’t be administered until players are identified as candidates for their national team at the Salt Lake City Games; the announcement of the first eight players on each team is several weeks away.

“It was some kind of misunderstanding,” Norstrom said. “I haven’t heard anything yet, but I would love to go again. I went to Nagano and it was a great experience.”

Only 362 days until the Salt Lake City Winter Games.