HELSINKI, March 23—Sixteen-year-old Russian sensation Evgeni Plushenko sat solidly in first place at the conclusion of the men's short program in the 1999 World Figure Skating Championships today. Nothing else about the results could be described as clear-cut.

The top five placements were far more plain than the calculus required to compute them: Russia's Alexei Yagudin, the defending world champion, was second, three-time world champion Elvis Stojko of Canada third and Fairfax skater Michael Weiss fourth. In fifth place was Russian Alexei Urmanov.

"The judges just kind of tossed up the chips, and they were all over the place," said Weiss, the U.S. champion who is seeking his first world championship medal.

Yagudin, Stojko and Weiss each received an equal number of second-place votes -- three. And Yagudin, oddly, received the same number of votes for third and fourth place as for second.

Placements are determined like this: the first-place finisher is the one with the most first-place votes. If no skater has a majority, it becomes the one with the most firsts and seconds. If there is still no majority, it's the skater with the most firsts, seconds and thirds. And so on.

The judges' obvious disagreement hints at a compelling conclusion to the men's competition in Thursday's deciding free skate. The overall standings among the top five going into the free skate are the same as today's short program results. The overall marks include the short program (30 percent of the final score) and Monday's qualifying results (20 percent).

Balancing Stojko's second-place votes were sixth-place marks from two judges. And pulling down Weiss's standing were three fifth-place marks and a perplexing seventh-place from a judge from Finland.

In another odd bit of mathematics, Urmanov did not receive a single vote lower than fifth place. But on balance, his marks were lower than Weiss's or Stojko's.

All of the top five skaters besides Plushenko, who received nine first-place votes, can be blamed for bringing the judges' confusion upon themselves. None skated flawlessly. None fell or made a major mistake, but all were tagged with deductions for minor flubs in the technically oriented short program.

"When people don't skate well in the short program, sometimes there is a lot of mixing and mingling with the marks, the judges trying to put everyone where they want them to be," Weiss said.

The leading six skaters each competed in the last group today, one after the other. Yagudin, who along with Urmanov won his qualifying group, skated first but stepped out of his combination jump.

Urmanov followed and turned a required triple jump into a double and misstepped on his footwork. Takeshi Honda of Japan, who fell from third place in his qualifying group to seventh place behind German Andresj Vlascenko, made two gaffes. He fell attempting a quadruple jump and turned a triple jump into a double.

Weiss followed and skated perhaps the most flawless program of any of the two-through-five skaters -- only his program had a slightly lower level of difficulty. Weiss's only mistake was two-footing the triple flip of a combination jump.

That left Plushenko, who brought the crowd of about 5,000 at Hartwall Arena to its feet. His effort lacked even a wobble.

At that point, the only thing standing between Weiss and third place entering the free skate was Stojko. Stojko turned a combination triple jump into a double, but he seemed to score points with the judges for attempting a quadruple toe loop. Stojko two-footed the landing, but the attempt showed daring.

Stojko's performance offered vindication for a traumatic season marred by a lingering groin injury. Stojko said today he didn't feel 100 percent healthy until a week ago. He has competed with the injury since the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, in which he all but limped to a silver medal.

"This season has been the toughest I've ever encountered by 10-fold," he said.

Weiss said he believed he deserved to be ahead of Stojko, who offered Weiss a friendly handshake before taking the ice, in the standings.

"Skating is a subjective sport," Weiss said. " . . . He didn't skate great; he skated okay. But he's a three-time world champion."

Nobody raised any questions about Plushenko's position, not even Yagudin, the defending world champion. The young Plushenko has humbled both of his countrymen recently, defeating them in this year's Russian national championships.

"Excellent," Plushenko said about his performance.

Yagudin declined to discuss an injury to his left calf that seems to have bothered him during the first two rounds. "It's my secret," he said.

The bigger secret is who will land on the podium after Thursday's competition.

"The way people are skating," Weiss said, "I think anybody still has a shot at it."

© Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company

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