Ice moves

Oksana Baiul has been on a long, emotional journey. She spent 31/2 months in a rehabilitation program battling the physical, psychological and emotional effects of alcoholism. The Olympic gold medal winner recently traveled back to her home in the Ukraine to find the family she never knew.

And now the 26-year-old Baiul is working around the clock to return to the skating world that once embraced her as the delicate darling of the ice. That part of her trek brings Baiul to Fresno as one of the guest performers for the Smucker's Stars On Ice show scheduled for

Wednesday at the Save Mart Center.

Baiul also can been seen along with Smucker's co-star Kurt Browning and Stars on Ice producer Scott Hamilton in the NBC special "Smucker's Stars on Ice" airing Sunday.

"She hit rock bottom," Hamilton says of Baiul's fall and return. "But she has really gone through a whole transformation. Oksana went through a struggle of finding herself. Now there is a new energy to her."

Baiul won the gold medal in Lillehammer in 1994, an Olympics overshadowed by the Nancy Kerrigan-Tanya Harding controversy. The Ukrainian skater, who had trained since she was 3, was not prepared for the crush of fans that would follow her long after the Olympic torch had been extinguished. No one coached her on how to deal with the publicity that comes with overnight celebrity status.

"I came to America at 16. I thought I was just switching places to live -- I will do the same thing. But it was not the same thing. I was trying to be an adult but I had no idea what I was doing," Baiul says during an early-morning telephone interview from her home in Cliffside Park, N.J. She has been home only a few hours after returning from a long training session in Richmond, Va.

"I was growing up, doing the things you do for the first time in your life, in front of millions of people. I wish that when I was going though all of that someone would have been there to care for me."

Baiul had no family support. Her parents divorced when she was 2. Baiul's mother, who died when the skater was 13, lost contact with Baiul's father.

Initial efforts by Baiul to contact her father failed. Neither the Red Cross nor the Ukrainian consulate could provide any information. All she knew was that her father had the same last name and still lived in a certain area of Dniepropetrovs'k, Ukraine.

Baiul took a more direct approach. She called the ice rink where she had first trained. She convinced the director to search for her father.

"He went door-to-door. A day later, I had a telephone number," Baiul says.

In September, Baiul traveled to Ukraine to meet the father and grandmother she never knew.

That reunion has helped her rejuvenate her career. Baiul says she is in good shape but wants to be in better shape. The process of regaining the form that won her the gold medal takes time.

But she promises a strong performance for the two numbers she will skate here.

"One number I am doing is 'Swan Lake.' That was how I was introduced to the American public, as this tiny swan. Now I want people to know I have grown up. This is the first year of re-introducing myself," Baiul says.

She mixes training and touring with work on her new line of skatewear for children, the Oksana Baiul Collection.

One of the big changes in the Smucker's Stars on Ice tour is the addition of guest skaters who will vary from town to town. Hamilton explains that rotating guests is a way to open up the show to new blood.

Browning skated as a full-time member of the Stars on Ice tour for 10 years.

"Stars on Ice has always been my home away from home. Now it is like selling a house and someone else is living in it," Browning says of his new guest-star status. "This will be a new experience for me."

Browning decided to end his role as a full-time company member to spend more time at home in Toronto with his wife, Sonia Rodriguez, a second soloist with the National Ballet of Canada. Being a guest skater has made the transition off the tour circuit a little easier.

The 37-year-old Browning never won an Olympic medal. But the Canadian skater has won numerous other awards, including World Championships in 1989, 1990, 1991 and 1993. And he continues to compete on the professional circuit and appear in television specials.

Browning gets a different rush from touring than he got from competing.

"A competition is still the chance to stick your chin out and see if you can take a punch," Browning says. "With a show it is tough because you could have traveled all night and then have to be ready to perform."

The big-name guest stars also make it possible to use young skaters and groom them to be the next big stars. The Stars on Ice cast members include 2002 Olympic gold medalist Alexei Yagudin; 2002 Olympic pair champions Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze; world champion and six-time U.S. national champion Todd Eldredge; world champion Yuka Sato; world silver medalists and three-time U.S. national pair champions Jenni Meno and Todd Sand; and world bronze medalists and three-time U.S. national pair champions Kyoko Ina and John Zimmerman.

Hamilton came up with the concept of Stars on Ice in 1986, after being given the cold shoulder by the organizers of the Ice Capades.

"The Ice Capades officials said that only women buy tickets to skate shows. So they let me go. I thought the audience was ready for something new. That's when the idea came up for Stars on Ice," Hamilton says.

Hamilton pauses. He laughs, then adds, "All right, I was trying to milk six years as a professional. I felt I needed to be dedicated to building an audience and set my mark before Brian Boitano and the other Olympic skaters took over in 1988."

That Olympic class didn't melt Hamilton's skating dreams. In fact, many of the stars of that Olympics were signed to the Stars On Ice tour. The skate show continued to grow until it hit a peak two years ago.

"We are re-inventing ourselves in this 18th year," Hamilton says. Part of that is reflected in the NBC Sunday afternoon special that features a sneak peek at this year's tour, plus a look at how Stars on Ice has changed over the years.

Hamilton, along with main choreographer Christopher Dean, has been involved in the transformation of this year's show, which includes more group numbers and an increase in high-tech lighting.

"Christopher [Dean] brings a whole new energy to the show. We knew we needed to inspire the audience to come back in big numbers," Hamilton says.

Fresno is only one of 19 shows the skaters will perform in January. Hamilton says the long tour proves one thing -- a skater better love a program done for a tour because he or she might have to skate it 150-300 times.

"In a competition you train and train and then after a 10 minutes of skating you are done. With entertaining you have to be on every night. It is a day-to-day grind," Hamilton says. "But you are building something. Every audience is important. You want to hit that audience hard enough that they think it is important enough to come back next year."