Ice Skating

Jean Lopez lives a cold and icy existence. However, she wouldn't have it any other way. The Sparks mother of one spends at least four days every week, sometimes more, at the Northwest Ice Rink, where she brings daughter Leandra.For some, like Lopez and her family, ice rinks are a year-round activity. For others, ice rinks are an occasional event, a seasonal activity on cold winter days.Donnell Myers, 10, is an ice-skating neophyte. Recently, he skated cautiously around the crowded ice rink looking pretty good for a first-timer.

As the music of Mendelssohn fills the rink, seven world-class skaters glide toward the center of the ice, braiding themselves, then separating, and braiding again as if they were genetic strands of the sound. As they move, they seem to breathe the same breath, pursue the same thought, spring from the same curve.They arch in effortless arabesques. They jump and spin in a way that is both fearless and hopeful. They are all the things you once thought you could be.Suddenly Nathan Birch calls a halt to the magic.

FAIRFAX, Va. -- The Fairfax Ice Arena doesn't look any different from your average neighborhood rink. Local kids pull on their skates one at a time just like everywhere else. The cool air is thick with their hopes and dreams, and the ice doesn't give much when they come back to earth.It is different, though. That much becomes evident when Michael Weiss, 20, settles gently back to the ice after a perfect triple and the ice rink moms -- who apparently moved indoors after soccer season -- burst into spontaneous applause.

ICE SKATING is enjoying unprecedented popularity throughout America. Developers in the Baltimore region are responding by erecting an precedented number of new indoor rinks. In an area where ice time was so scare not long ago that hockey leagues routinely scheduled games and practices after midnight and figure skaters were perfecting double toe loops before the sun rose, this building spree is putting smiles on the faces of serious and casual skaters.Baltimore County's approval this month of a $5.3 million project in the Fullerton area, planned to include two National Hockey League-sized rinks, is the most recent manifestation of this boom.

Shaun Rogers, a 12-year-old from Brightview Woods in Anne Arundel County, will be out for gold the third week in March when he takes the ice at the Junior Olympics in Plano, Texas.Shaun is ranked among the top 12 intermediate men's figure skaters in the country by the U.S. Figure Skating Association.In October, he skated in the South District competition in Tampa, Fla., where he qualified for the Eastern championships in Simsbury, Conn., in which he finished third. The top four finishers go on to the Junior Olympics.

For three years, Ekaterina Gordeeva has faced the ice alone, spinning and jumping with the best. Now, she's going to try flying again. In an ice-skating show touring the country, Gordeeva is lifted high in the air by a male skater, Denis Petrov. After a few moments, Gordeeva twists elegantly downward and lands lightly on the ice.It's the first time since her husband and longtime partner, Sergei Grinkov, suddenly died that Gordeeva has done one of these dangerous, full-extension lifts. Her colleagues and fans wondered when the moment might come, if ever.

Wondering why the winter blues are hitting you especially hard this year? Well, first of all, rather than enjoying the relatively mild weather we've have so far, you're probably worrying about when the snow and ice will finally hit here. Plus, you're dealing with the usual post-holiday letdown. Oh, and then there was that puny little buildup (only lasted a year or so) to a certain Millennium Moment that was supposed to hit like gangbusters and change all our lives . . . but didn't. That, of course, wouldn't have anything to do with why you're down in the dumps, would it?

IF THE FACTS weren't so pathetic, international ice skating's still-unraveling judging scandal could be a plot for a late-night movie. Thin Ice. There's this Russian mobster, see. He's been making calls to an ice starlet's mommy. She needs a gold medal, and he needs a visa, and in their tawdry world nothing else matters -- not the millions of television viewers assuming skating competition to be fair, not the aspirations of world-class competitors who've given their lives preparing for their fleeting moment in the light of the Olympic flame.

Stacy Lewis of Pikesville braved yesterday's cold to give her son a birthday present -- ice skating at Rash Field in the Inner Harbor."It's freezing but you have to take the time and the opportunity to expose children to new things," Mrs. Lewis said, quickly lacing her mustard yellow ice skates to catch up with her 6-year-old son, Alexander.L "He loves roller skating but the jury is still out on this."Some 125 skaters -- parents and their children -- crowded the Baltimore On Ice skating rink near the Maryland Science Center yesterday.

AS JOHN J. OTLOWSKY skated from his 60s and into his 70s, he learned one of life's sadder lessons: "You slow up a little bit," he says. "The muscles aren't what they used to be. Your legs haven't got the push you used to have."On the other hand, there's still a good bit of push there, which Otlowsky, now 76, demonstrated last Wednesday evening as he skated with his 69- and 70-year-old buddies at the Mount Pleasant Ice Arena on Hillen Road."My doctor says it really helps, it keeps everything circulating, it keeps you going," says the former furniture finisher for Levinson and Klein, who's been ice skating since he was about 20.Besides, he likes it. "Man, it feels like you're flying.