Injured Yagudin Has His Eye on the Cash

Alexei Yagudin has never been reluctant to say what he thinks. But organizers of tonight’s Crest Whitestrips International Figure Skating Challenge must have cringed when the Olympic gold medalist said he was too injured to skate his best but would show up, anyway, for the money.

Yagudin won the Sears Open last week in Red Deer, Canada, a minor miracle because of a hip problem that has caused the cartilage to wear away. He reportedly limped when he walked but skated well enough to earn four perfect scores of 6.0 and land difficult triple-triple jump combinations.

Afterward, he told Canada’s Globe and Mail he wouldn’t be matching that this weekend.

“I can easily say what my place is going to be there,” he said. “I’m not even going to try. I can’t do that right now. I can’t pull everything from me.”

He’s reluctant to have surgery because, he said, it’s not certain an operation would alleviate his pain, and he fears the injury will curtail his career.

“That’s why I decided to go to these events,” he said. “It’s my job. It’s how I get my salary and I will need that in the future. Maybe I will not be able to skate in a few years.”

Tonight’s event, at the Palace of Auburn Hills in Michigan, is backed by the U.S. Figure Skating Assn., sanctioned by the International Skating Union, and is for Olympic-eligible skaters.

The men’s field also includes Takeshi Honda, Olympic silver medalist Evgeny Plushenko, Olympic bronze medalist Tim Goebel, Matt Savoie and Michael Weiss. Goebel, who trains in El Segundo, has missed most of the season because of a hip problem.

The women’s field is led by Olympic gold medalist Sarah Hughes, competing for the first time since a torn leg muscle kept her out of the Grand Prix series. She will compete against Olympic silver medalist and world champion Irina Slutskaya; Sasha Cohen, Viktoria Volchkova, Jennifer Kirk and Ann Patrice McDonough.

The Hallmark Skaters’ championship, to be held Saturday in Columbus, Ohio, features Olympic pairs co-gold medalists Jamie Sale and David Pelletier.

Yagudin is scheduled to compete Saturday too. Also entered are Honda, six-time U.S. champion Todd Eldredge and two-time U.S. champion Weiss. Hughes, Slutskaya, Maria Butyrskaya and Yuka Sato will compete for the women’s prize. Sale and Pelletier, who won the Sears Open, will compete with Olympic bronze medalists Xue Shen and Hongbo Zhao; Sato and Jason Dungjen, and Qing Pang and Jian Tong.

All Very Grand

Michelle Kwan wasn’t expecting to qualify for the Grand Prix Final after competing in -- and winning -- one event, Skate America. However, a series of surprises among the top women gave the Torrance native the sixth and last berth in the Grand Prix Final, Feb. 28-March 3 in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Kwan had planned to reduce her schedule this season but stepped in on short notice at Skate America when Hughes withdrew. Kwan and Cohen are the only U.S. skaters who qualified for the Grand Prix Final.

“Making the final came as a surprise to her,” said Kwan’s agent, Shep Goldberg.

“This is something she may well do, but she’s not going to think about it until after nationals.”

U.S. Figure Skating Assn. spokesman Bob Dunlop said he expected Kwan to delay a decision until after the U.S. championships, Jan. 12-19 in Dallas. If she were to opt out of the Grand Prix Final, “certainly we would not hold it against her,” Dunlop said. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

Goldberg confirmed that Kwan planned to compete in the U.S. championships, whose top three finishers will qualify for the world championships, March 24-30 in Washington. He also said she still was working with Coach Scott Williams, whom she hired a few months ago, and had consulted Nikolai Morozov on refining her programs.

All Downhill From Here

U.S. ski officials were ecstatic over their athletes’ success last weekend, which included eight top-three finishes and 10 top-10 finishes in ski and snowboard events. Three U.S. men finished in the top 10 at a World Cup downhill race at Beaver Creek, Colo., the first such success for the men since 1972.

“This is absolutely what we’re looking for,” said Alan Ashley, vice president of athletics for the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Assn. “It’s a signal we’re on the right track.”

The U.S. Alpine team is third behind Austria and Switzerland for the Nations Cup, which encompasses all Alpine events.

Here and There

The City of Los Angeles marathon next year will be the first major marathon to offer runners personalized bibs. Participants who register before Dec. 30 will have their first names on their bibs, which might not help them run faster but gives spectators a rooting interest. Details: www.lamarathon.com.

The U.S. women’s water polo team reached the semifinals of the World Cup tournament with an 8-3 victory over Australia at Perth, winning its group title at 2-0-1. Brenda Villa of Commerce scored four goals in an 11-1 rout of Kazakhstan in the second game, even though she missed the morning practice to complete two finals for her courses at Stanford.

The Junior Grand Prix Final figure skating competition starts today in the Netherlands. Beatrisa Liang of Granada Hills and the pair of Tiffany and Johnnie Stiegler of Manhattan Beach are among the entrants. A third testing of the proposed cumulative scoring system will be run concurrently with the existing system.