Debbie Becker
January 1998
Davis still has opportunity to crash party at Olympics PHILADELPHIA--If figure skating were a football game, after halftime---no matter how huge a lead one team might have--- you'd erase the scoreboard and start all over. Esentially, that's what happens tonight when the men's long program takes place at the U.S. figure skating National Championships at the Core-States Center. At stake: two spots on the Olympic team.Todd Eldrege already owns four U.S. titles. He's epected towin his fifth here and also grab the automatic spot to Nagano Winter Olympics. A 34-member committee will select the second Olympian. It should be Michael Weiss, but his is figure skating and anything can happen.
The long program, which runs 4 1/2 minutes, is worth 2/3 of the total score. That means anyone in the top three after the short can win the title by winning the long program.
Eldrege stands first, Weiss second, and Scott Davis third after Tuesday's short program. Davis, 25, from Great Falls, Mont., managed to hang onto third despite turning a required triple lutz into a singlr,a glaring error.
"When I got off the ice, I said, 'Can I do it again?'" said Davis, who has a history of falling apart at big events.
It was not a stellar night of skating for the men. Falls came so often, that ABC Commentator Dick Button said that most of the field "would have had a tough time winning a skating pond competition."
Should the entirely unexpected happen and Davis eins tonight, the commottee would have to leave Eldrege or Weiss home.
Eldrege, 26, fromChatam, Mass., has had terrible luck in Olympic years. An Olympic favorite in 1992, he finished 10th in Albertville when a back injury hampered his performance. In the 1994 Olympic trials, he got the flu and a 104-degree teperature and passed out cold in his hotel room sink a day before the competitionbagean. He placed 4th and missed making the Olympic team.
Davis alsp hit hard times after his cinsecutive U.S. titles, including an upset of Brian Boitano in 1994. He hasn't won a significant competition since those nationals and usually has finished far back at major events.
Davis' problems, he admits, have been more mental and emotional than physical. He had a nasty breakup with his coach, Kathy Casey, and it toolk him a while to get comfortable in his new surroundings at Simsbury Conn., where he is trained by Galina Zmievskaya, who helped Oksana Baiul and Viktor Petrenko win Olympic gold for Ukraine.
No matter the stakes, tonight Weiss will attempt to become the first American to land a Quadruple jump and the first man to land a quadruple lutz.
"It's risky but as an athlete you always hae a few doubts in your mind,' said Weiss, 21, of Fairfax Va. "That's what separates us, we go out there and do it anyway.
"I never leave anything on the ice," says Weiss, whose father Greg competed on the 1964 U.S. Olympic gymnastics team. "You dont's hold back."
