Russian Pair Not Worried

Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze of Russia, who lead the pairs figure skating competition, apparently feel no pressure to continue their country’s Olympic pairs winning streak tonight.

Skaters from the former Soviet Union and Russia have monopolized the pairs title at every Olympics starting with the 1964 Innsbruck Games. However, Berezhnaya said she and Sikharulidze are looking forward, not back.

“I don’t count how many years everybody won,” she said. “We are here to compete. I don’t think about a thousand years ago. We just do what we have to do.”

Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze, who train at the same rink in Hackensack, N.J., as do U.S. champions Kyoko Ina and John Zimmerman, will skate second in the final group tonight after fellow Russians Tatiana Totmianina and Maxim Marinin. Skating third will be world champions Jamie Sale and David Pelletier of Canada, who were second after the short program, and Xue Shen and Hongbo Zhao of China, who are third in the standings.

Any of the top three couples can win the gold medal by being ranked first in the long program, which is worth two-thirds of the final score.

Ina and Zimmerman, who were ranked fifth in the short program, will skate 13th. The other U.S. entry, Tiffany Scott and Philip Dulebohn, ranked 11th, will skate 10th.

Zimmerman said he’s hopeful the pair can move up, although he knows winning a medal will require luck, ability and competitors’ mistakes. Zimmerman said the strengths of their long program, performed to variations on a theme of Niccolo Paganini orchestrated by Sergei Rachmaninov, are “originality and the type of athleticism and artistry we put out [that] are our own.”

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U.S. figure skating champion Todd Eldredge seems to be lucky when it comes to drawing for the starting order at competitions, invariably getting a late enough position to avoid risking a quadruple jump.

Eldredge’s luck continued Sunday when he drew the 25th of 29 positions for the men’s short program, which will be contested Tuesday. Fellow Americans Timothy Goebel drew 20th and Michael Weiss first, an unfortunate position because the judges tend to hold back on their marks in case someone dazzles them later.

World champion Evgeny Plushenko of Russia drew 18th and his countryman and predecessor as world champion, Alexei Yagudin, will skate 14th.

Fellow Russian Alexander Abt, who was second to Yagudin at the European championships, will skate 24th. Abt trains at Lake Arrowhead.

The final skater will be two-time Olympic silver medalist Elvis Stojko of Canada. The men’s competition will conclude Thursday.

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Picabo Street finished seventh Sunday in her final training run before today’s women’s downhill. Street finished first in Saturday’s first training run.

“I didn’t want to walk out of here with the heat on my shoulders like I did yesterday,” Street said. “So, it’s like, let everybody else lose sleep tonight.”

Austria’s Renate Goetschl, one of the favorites, won the final training run. Street was the top U.S. finisher, followed by Caroline Lalive (13th).

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For the second night in a row, three of the top seven television markets came from the Pacific time zone.

Saturday night’s coverage from Salt Lake City generated a national rating of 17.1 with a 30% share of the audience, and the top three rated markets were, in order, Salt Lake City (37.2/59), Seattle (24.7/42) and Portland (24.2/40). Sacramento (21.5/36) ranked seventh. Los Angeles ranked 26th with a 17.0/29 and San Francisco ranked 17th with an 18.5/35.

The 17.1 national rating represents a 39% increase over the 12.3 CBS got for its second night of Winter Olympics coverage from Nagano, Japan, in 1998. NBC’s two-night average is a 21.5/36, a 45% increase over CBS’ two-night average of 14.8/26 at Nagano.

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Times staff writers Helene Elliott, Chris Dufresne and Larry Stewart contributed to this report.