Boitano

OLYMPIC GOLD medalists Brian Boitano and Katarina Witt are coming to the Baltimore Arena Tuesday, stopping here to entertain as part of their new national skating tour.Before they arrive, Accent will be providing Baltimore-area children a chance to ask either skater a question by calling SUNDIAL, the free telephone information service of The Baltimore Sun.Our Gold Line to Boitano and Witt will be open this weekend from noon Friday until noon Saturday. Using a touch-tone phone, call 783-1800.

Evan Lysacek's coach, Frank Carroll, had one major hope for his skater going into Thursday's Olympic free skate final. "I want him to grab this opportunity and make it something special," Carroll said, "because so few skaters have this chance." Lysacek did all that and more at the Pacific Coliseum. Shaking off the suffocating pressure of the moment -- which actually lasted four minutes, 30 seconds -- Lysacek delivered a brilliant, career-best performance to become the first U.S. man to win the Olympic skating gold medal since Brian Boitano in 1988.

DETROIT -- This is how a professional takes a lead.On a night when he appeared nervous, when he almost botched his first triple jump and had trouble connecting with an audience while performing a waltz, Brian Boitano showed skaters nearly 10 years his junior what it takes to compete under pressure.Just grit and bear it.Boitano warded off the shakes and won round one of the U.S. Figure Skating Championships by taking the lead in last night's technical program, worth 33.3 percent of the overall score.

Now, men view glitter as paving way to gold On the subject of figure-skating costumes, Olympic champion Scott Hamilton has one hard-and-fast rule: "The pants must stretch." For fellow gold medalist Brian Boitano, "It must be masculine." But Timothy Goebel, the 2002 bronze medalist, rarely gets involved in the costumes he wears. "It's not like this is the Oscars. It doesn't matter. No one is looking at what I'm wearing." But they do look and it does matter. All that glitters is not gold in Olympic men's figure skating.

LANDOVER -- Brian Boitano strung together a batch of his trademark triples and made it a quadruple -- a fourth straight men's title at the NutraSweet World Professional Figure Skating Championships.And it was his hardest-fought title, as Scott Hamilton and Robin Cousins -- gold medalists who had been eclipsed by Boitano -- cut him no quarter."It really means a lot to me," said Boitano, who edged Hamilton by seven-tenths and Cousins by eight-tenths of a point out of a possible 100 points.And it did it with the quick-footed fun-packed style that they have made their own."

LANDOVER -- Brian Boitano sat nervously on a table in the hallway outside the locker room, trying to retain his focus on his program. It wasn't easy. The Zamboni ice-smoothing machine had broken down, and the four-time professional world champion was being asked to hold that thought a little longer."

What is Brian Boitano up to these days?Funny you should ask.Make that, funny you should see.The young man whose charisma and athleticism won him a gold medal at the 1988 Winter Olympics is changing. He still cuts that Errol Flynn figure on the ice.But he's also getting funnier.Not guffaw funny. You won't be slapping your knee at baggy clown pants or pratfalls on the ice.Boitano's humor is in character: elusive, sophisticated, slightly self-deprecating. It is just the kind of humor you would expect from Boitano.

LILLEHAMMER, Norway -- Brian Boitano has seen the bright lights of the ice show circuit from New York to Paris.He has skated with Katarina Witt, performed in prime-time television specials, earned millions for turning triple jumps on a dime, night after night, year after year.But on the whole, this is where he would rather be, in another Winter Olympics, testing his skills and his courage against another generation of would-be figure skating kings."I wouldn't be here if I didn't think I could win," Boitano said.

Courtney Winer, an 8-year-old student at Pot Spring Elementary School in Timonium, cut right to the chase.She used The Evening Sun's call-in line to ask a simple question of celebrity ice-skaters Brian Boitano and Katarina Witt: "Has skating been worth the things you gave up in your childhood and teen-age years?"Boitano and Witt, who brought their show, "Skating II," to the Baltimore Arena last night, more than agreed that their sacrifices have been well-rewarded. Boitano is even reluctant to admit that he made sacrifices.

LANDOVER -- Brian Boitano finished off the fall season last night with a title-clinching performance in the COMPLETE World Professional Figure Skating Championships."

LANDOVER -- Kurt Browning of Canada and Yuka Sato of Japan came into this year's NutraSweet World Professional Figure Skating Championships with about the same kind of expectations for victory: none.Browning, a former four-time world amateur champion, had to beat Brian Boitano, who had won this event six of the past seven years. Sato figured she had to beat two Americans, Kristi Yamaguchi and Nancy Kerrigan, as well as win over the crowd at USAir Arena.Guess what happened.With a near-perfect artistic program performed to the Commodores' hit, "Brick House," the 29-year-old Browning interrupted Boitano's reign.

LANDOVER -- Brian Boitano finished off the fall season last night with a title-clinching performance in the COMPLETE World Professional Figure Skating Championships."

HAMAR, Norway -- Welcome to the Rink of Dreams. If you build it, they will come. Welcome to the very temporary home of the world's greatest collection of masters figure skaters.Back from the mists come the hallowed names from those distant days of the eighties, when yuppies were young: Torvill and Dean, Witt and Boitano.But the Old Boys and the Old Girls are finding it not so easy to waltz back into the Olympic movement and collect the medals and the standing ovations that used to belong to them.

HAMAR, Norway -- "It's not a story about age, it's a story about an injury," Brian Boitano was saying last night, putting his spin on his sixth-place finish in the Olympic skating competition.It was a story about both, however. About an injury, yes. But also very much about age.There was just no getting around it on a night when the gold medalist was 20, the silver medalist was 21 and the bronze medalist was 22, and Boitano, 30, wound up peering through a curtain to watch them get their medals.

The TV Repairman:Someone, probably Coroebus, first winner of a gold medal 2,870 years ago, once uttered, "This is the Olympics, anything can happen."How true, how true."

Maybe because it had been so widely reported -- including by CBS -- that Brian Boitano was going to lead off the men's figure skating short programs, CBS couldn't delay his appearance last night.So Boitano was the first skater we saw -- and the first we saw stumble.Afterward, he was shown a replay of his missed jump and asked to explain. Boitano said that, while he was in the air, he wasn't thinking technical thoughts (which I think was Peter Pan's secret)."When I was going into it," Boitano said, "I was thinking, 'Land it, land it.' "Analyst Scott Hamilton had a less psychological explanation for the stumble.

The TV Repairman:Someone, probably Coroebus, first winner of a gold medal 2,870 years ago, once uttered, "This is the Olympics, anything can happen."How true, how true."

Maybe because it had been so widely reported -- including by CBS -- that Brian Boitano was going to lead off the men's figure skating short programs, CBS couldn't delay his appearance last night.So Boitano was the first skater we saw -- and the first we saw stumble.Afterward, he was shown a replay of his missed jump and asked to explain. Boitano said that, while he was in the air, he wasn't thinking technical thoughts (which I think was Peter Pan's secret)."When I was going into it," Boitano said, "I was thinking, 'Land it, land it.' "Analyst Scott Hamilton had a less psychological explanation for the stumble.

LILLEHAMMER, Norway -- Brian Boitano has seen the bright lights of the ice show circuit from New York to Paris.He has skated with Katarina Witt, performed in prime-time television specials, earned millions for turning triple jumps on a dime, night after night, year after year.But on the whole, this is where he would rather be, in another Winter Olympics, testing his skills and his courage against another generation of would-be figure skating kings."I wouldn't be here if I didn't think I could win," Boitano said.

LILLEHAMMER, Norway -- The images rise from the mist of a Nordic morning:Italian ski racer Alberto Tomba charging down a mountain like a rampaging bull on snow.American speed skater Bonnie Blair, caught in a crouch, skating against herself and history.And British skaters Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean, elegance on ice, tap dancing toward gold.These are the deja vu Winter Olympics.There is a sense that the world has seen all this before, even as nearly 2,000 athletes from 69 nations assemble for today's opening ceremonies of the 17th Winter Games.