Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, March 26, 1994                   TAG: 9403280157
SECTION: NATIONAL/INT                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: MOSCOW                                LENGTH: Medium

SKIER PAID DEARLY FOR UZBEKISTAN'S 1ST GOLD MEDAL

It was her mother's last wish.

Cheryazova, who overcame long odds and near-crippling injuries to win a gold medal in freestyle aerials skiing, learned soon after stepping down from the podium in Norway on Feb. 24 that her mother had died 22 days earlier.

At Svetlana Cheryazova's request, Lina was not told of the situation. Her mother was buried on Feb. 7 while Lina was away training.

Reached in the Uzbek capital of Tashkent by The Moscow Times, the 25-year-old skier said she had been told her mother may have died because the antibiotic needed to treat her, expensive by Uzbek standards at $10 to $25 per dose, was unavailable.

``It's been very difficult to return home,'' she said. ``This gold medal cost me a lot.''

Cheryazova's mother was injured Jan.10 while working at a tractor factory when her work clothes got caught in a metal-cutting machine and she was dragged in feet-first.

Her husband, Anatoly Cheryazov, told the newspaper that doctors at the scene ignored his wife's diabetic condition and sent her home, where gangrene set in after a week and she finally was admitted to the local clinic.

But in a country struggling to overcome a depressed economy, the proper medicine could not be found to treat the infection.

A former gymnast who switched to skiing at the relatively advanced age of 19, Cheryazova, an ethnic Russian, this month won the season-long World Cup title for the second straight year.

She competed at the Olympics with a damaged ligament in her right knee and torn cartilage in both knees. During a training jump, her right knee buckled on landing and she careened into support poles in a collision that knocked her unconscious and bruised her thigh and ribs.

Largely because of her injuries, she was a distant 12th going into the final two jumps. But her triples propelled her to the gold despite her unsteady landings.

Now Cheryazova is about to be treated to a hero's welcome in Uzbekistan: a fete, a meeting with President Islam Karimov, a new car and $10,000 - money that perhaps could have been used to obtain antibiotics for her mother.