Usa’s Bobek Stays On Course To Ice World Title 17-Year-Old Chicago Skater Pulls Upset In Short Program

Everyone knew that Nicole Bobek had the kind of free-spirit attitude it takes to shake off adversity.

But no one anywhere could have predicted that, come this afternoon, the 17-year-old “wild child” from Chicago would be 4 minutes away from a world title.

Bobek, unheralded on the world scene, pulled a stunning upset Friday to win the women’s short program at the World Figure Skating Championships. She did it with beautiful spirals, solid jumps, a winning school-girl smile - and nerves of steel.

Dressed in white with gold sequins, Bobek was the epitome of grace and style as she glided across the ice at the NEC Arena. Her performance was judged better than the brute athleticism of five-time European champion Surya Bonaly, better than the sensual sassiness of Russia’s Olga Markova, better than that of all other supposed medal-contenders.

“It’s a dream come true,” Bobek said.

There was no such surprise in the ice dance, in which defending champions Oksana Grischuk and Yevgeny Platov of Russia took the gold again with a Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers-style free dance.

Even though there was only one flaw in Bobek’s 2 1/2-minute program - she scrapped a toe at the end of her combination jump - she all but leaped off the kiss-and-cry couch in amazement as the marks were announced: six 5.9s for presentation and first place on six of the nine judges’ cards. The gold is within her grasp if she can give the same kind of effort in today’s free skate.

“Mr. (coach Richard) Callaghan told me to relax, just go out and do it, and I did,” she said to the press, punctuating her sentence with another giggle before turning serious. “I had a lot to prove. I proved to a lot of people that this whole incident, whatever, you know, didn’t affect me.”

The “whatever, you know” incident has turned out to be the biggest figure skating controversy since, well, since last year, when Nancy Kerrigan was banged in the knee in a conspiracy cooked up by Tonya Harding’s ex-husband and associates.

Harding was a strongly opinionated, cigarette-smoking blonde who didn’t like to train and has had a run-in with the law. Ditto for Bobek.

Bobek, meanwhile, has shrugged off her troubles - which were never remotely as severe as Harding’s.

After she upset Michelle Kwan to win the U.S. nationals, it was leaked to the press that Bobek - whose notoriety for going astray on foreign trips had already earned her a certain reputation in figure skating circles - had entered a conditional plea of guilty in January for home invasion of a fellow skater’s house.

The case was dismissed because one of the conditions of Bobek’s plea was the case not be made public. Her lawyer alleged that a rival skater or former coach was behind the leak.

That led to a siege of reporters around Bobek’s training rink in Detroit as U.S. skating officials shielded her from any contact with the media.

But if the furor had any effect on the self-described free spirit, it hasn’t shown.