Changing of Skate Guard, Favorites Slip Through Cracks -- Urmanov Wins, Boitano 6th, Davis 8th

Copyright Globe Newspaper Company 1994

HAMAR, Norway - When it was done, you wondered what all the fuss had been about. Skating purists thought the world would end if professional skaters were let into the Olympics. But last night former champions Brian Boitano and Viktor Petrenko watched the medal ceremonies on TV.

The amateurs -- Russia's Alexei Urmanov, Canada's Elvis Stojko and France's Philippe Candeloro -- had crowded them off the podium -- and bounced four-time Canadian world champion Kurt Browning for good measure.

"The whole last flight was all new guys," said Browning, who ended up fifth behind Petrenko and ahead of Boitano last night after all of them had blown Thursday's short program. "It's a new style of skating. There was a time when they were saying that about me."

Browning, who needed a third in last night's long program to bring him up from 12th, skated to "As Time Goes By." The irony was not lost on the crowd inside the Olympic Amphitheatre, which realized it was saying farewell to the old guard.

Boitano is 30, Browning 27. Petrenko, who'd won the gold medal at Albertville, is only 24, but this was his third Winter Games. They were '80s skaters trying to make it in the '90s against younger kids with looser limbs and nothing to lose. And they got no breaks from judges who held them to a professional standard, and marked them harshly when they fell short.

Boitano, who'd won the 1988 title with a flawless program, stepped out of his first triple axel last night and needed to nail another one to salvage a sixth, the worst US placement at the Olympics since 1976. Petrenko popped a couple of triple jumps and got hung with a bunch of 5.7s and 5.6s.

"We were under a lot more pressure than those younger guys," said Boitano, who at least managed to beat US champion Scott Davis, who dropped from fourth to eighth after coming unglued in the first minute. "If those young guys can do what we've done in 10 years, then I hand it to them."

Boitano skated as well as a 30-year-old with a bad knee could. "People see your name and automatically expect you to win," he said. "But they don't see behind the scenes to see how hard I worked just to get my knee to feel decent for one day."

Urmanov survived a broken leg to get here, but he's only 20. Stojko, who knocked off Browning at last month's Canadian championships, is 21. Candeloro, who won France's first men's medal since Patrick Pera in 1972, is 22. They didn't have to worry about whether they could do a second triple axel. It's simply expected.

After Stojko popped his first triple axel combination, he simply ad-libbed another one later and ended up salvaging the silver, Canada's third in the last four Olympics.

"Do it now," Stojko told himself, scrubbing his planned quadruple/triple. "It's the Olympics, and you've only got one chance. Go for it."

Urmanov, who was fifth at Albertville, came here expecting little. "I did think I could do good here," he said. "But I didn't think about the gold medal because of the two professionals and Browning. But who could know they would make mistakes in the short program? You didn't know. I didn't know."

The old guard was out of contention before they took the ice last night. When Urmanov, who led after the short program, saw Stojko forced to rebuild his program on the fly and watched Candeloro crash on a triple axel 10 seconds from the end, he knew he needed only to stay upright to prevail. "I knew I was going to win," Urmanov said. "I presented my program with strength."

The new guard were teen-agers when Boitano and Petrenko stood on the podium at Calgary and when Browning won his first world crown in 1989.

Last night they took over, and banished their elders to the ice shows. No more judges, no more triple axel combinations, no more pressure.

"No more five-minute warmups," mused Browning. "Just go for the standing ovation every night."