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

DATE: MONDAY, January 10, 1994                   TAG: 9401100036
SECTION: SPORTS                    PAGE: B-5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: DETROIT                                LENGTH: Medium

U.S. HAS ITS WOMEN'S SKATING TEAM

Kerrigan will be going to Lillehammer, Norway, because of a U.S. Figure Skating Association committee decision to place her on the squad and bump 13-year-old Michelle Kwan. Kerrigan withdrew from the championships Friday, one day after an unidentified man whacked her right knee with a club or metal bar.

Late Saturday, after she watched Tonya Harding win her second American title, Kerrigan - the 1993 U.S. champion and a bronze medalist at the '92 Albertville Games - was told she would join Harding on the Olympic team.

"I wasn't able to prove myself here, and I worked so hard and I definitely want to go out there and just prove to myself and everybody else how good I can be," Kerrigan said.

First, she must prove how healthy she is. Kerrigan, who sustained a severe knee bruise, will undergo an magnetic resonance imaging test today. She is expected to get back on the ice late this week. Doctors said she could begin jumping in two weeks, leaving her a month to get ready for Lillehammer.

"It's not going to take that much once I am back in shape to get there," she said, "because I have been so prepared and trained for so many months, and I think even with a couple weeks off, I can get back pretty easily."

Nothing came easily at the nationals. Roca and partner Gorsha Sur withdrew just before the free dance because Roca broke a wrist during a practice session when she collided with another couple. The defending champions couldn't have gone to the Olympics anyway because Sur, who defected from Russia in 1990, is not an American citizen.

Roca will be sidelined about 10 weeks.

"I'll just go home and take care of my arm for a couple of weeks, then get back on the ice and see what's what," she said.

In their absence, Elizabeth Punsalan and Jerod Swallow won their second national crown and first Olympic berth.

Harding, the 1991 U.S. champion and the only active woman to have completed a triple axel in competition, easily won in Kerrigan's absence. Not that she wouldn't have challenged Kerrigan.

"I came here to win and I did and I think I proved myself," Harding said. As for the Olympics, "Yes, I am going there to win," she added. "I don't see anybody as my top competitor. I see myself as my top competitor."

Harding, who received a death threat at a local competition last fall, was fourth in the 1992 Olympics. She knows she will need the triple axel - which she did not attempt this weekend - against the likes of world champion Oksana Baiul of Ukraine, China's Chen Lu, Kerrigan and perhaps Germany's Katerina Witt.

In a men's event missing contender Michael Chack, who has groin injury, Scott Davis used two triple axels and an exciting program to upset Brian Boitano, who missed his second triple axel. Although that wasn't the entire difference, it was a contributing factor, and Boitano knows it.

"I would have liked to have won. I'm disappointed I didn't pull that stupid triple axel," said the 1988 Olympic winner.

Still, he will be considered a stronger medals threat than Davis because of his worldwide reputation, though Kathy Casey, Davis' coach, warns against overlooking her skater.

"He's already beaten some of the big guns," she said, "and technically and artistically he is right in the money."

None of the pairs going to Norway figures to be in the running for a medal - or even the top five. Champions Jenni Meno and Todd Sand were at Albertville with different partners. Runners-up Kyoko Ina and Jason Dungjen are a new couple with little international experience, and the third-place pair, Karen Courtland and Todd Reynolds, skated poorly at nationals and were saved by suspect judging.

Perhaps the happiest performer at the championships was Kwan, who established himself as a force for the '90s. She didn't flinch when her Olympic spot was given to Kerrigan, saying it was "fair" and "the right thing to do." And she might wind up at the Winter Games if Kerrigan isn't fully recovered.