Boitano

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.

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.

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.

Real men don't like figure skating. Just ask the real man who controls the remote control in your life. He'll tell you it is not a sport.It is not a sport if you wear sequins when you do it. It is not a sport if the music they play while you do it matters. It is not a sport if you do it while holding a woman in your arms. And it is not a sport if people watching decide who wins.But the men of America will be good sports this month when women seize control of the television to watch the Winter Olympics from Lillehammer, Norway.

DETROIT -- Brian Boitano was the pro who couldn't lose. He was too experienced, too perfect, too artistic.But a strange thing happened to Boitano and his comeback to a fifth American skating title.He ran into a Montana cowboy who turned an ice show into the back lot of "West Side Story."Scott Davis, playing a Jet from Leonard Bernstein's street play, scored one of the great upsets in skating history, beating Boitano and retaining his title in the U.S. Figure Skating Championships last night.

LANDOVER -- It hurt like the blazes, but there was nothing like a bunch of perfect scores to ease the pain.Brian Boitano, skating on an injured hip he reinjured in his first number of the night, scored six perfect 10s and a 9.9 to win his third straight NutraSweet World Professional Figure Skating title at the Capital Centre."

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.

Two years after his Olympic gold-medal triumph, Brian Boitano is still training two hours a day, executing the most difficult triple jumps and generally acting as if he could take on the best skaters in the world -- not the usual behavior of a champion in post-competition "retirement."Unlike many former Olympians whose skating slides into disrepair once they turn pro, Boitano hasn't taken the easy road."He's the best male skater in the world -- ever," says Billy Schneider, a top national coach who knew Boitano when the two came up through the amateur ranks as youngsters.

LANDOVER -- In February, at Albertville, France, they will crown the best figure skater in the world.Trouble is, he won't be there.Even as the Olympics opens its arms to professionals in nearly every sport, those arms are crossed obstinately across the chest in figure skating.And so Brian Boitano will not compete in the Winter Olympics in Albertville."I think I would shine there," said Boitano, who won the gold medal at the 1988 Games in Calgary, Alberta."In my Olympic performance I did more than anyone had done in the past, and I've improved since then."

"I'll be dying 27 times," Olympic gold medalist Katarina Witt says wryly, as she thinks about performing the role of "Carmen" on ice in a new show that's just begun a five-month tour."Skating II" -- which will be performed at 7:30 tonight at the Baltimore Arena -- features Ms. Witt together with fellow Olympian Brian Boitano and an international cast of 12 world-class skaters.The East German skating star will be in the spotlight five times during the evening. As a finale, she and Mr. Boitano will perform the death scene from the HBO movie, "Carmen on Ice," which won the pairEmmy Awards.