Oksana’s Troubles Skating Star, Free From Discipline, Lacks A Guiding Hand

Far from her roots in Ukraine, where her father abandoned her and her mother died, figure skater Oksana Baiul is growing into a young woman with fame and fortune - and little guidance.

The Olympic champion is recovering from a car crash in her rambling new home, big enough for a family with guest rooms to spare. She’s just 19 and lives there alone.

She has strayed from those who have tried to fill the void, friends say, and is wriggling out of the skating cocoon that has protected her for so long. Almost three years since edging Nancy Kerrigan for the gold medal at the 1994 Games, Baiul is back on the front pages again.

“She’s really a hip girl and wants to experience something else other than a double axel and a freezing cold rink,” says Brian Boitano, an Olympic gold medalist who has toured professionally with Baiul.

“I always thought when I won at 24 it was young. I can’t imagine 16. It’s difficult to achieve so much success at such a young age. If she wasn’t so strong, someone weaker would have even more trouble than Oksana.”

Last week, Baiul was charged with reckless and drunken driving after her Mercedes-Benz careened off a country road into brush and saplings. Too young to legally drink, she suffered a concussion and needed 12 stitches in her scalp. A passenger, Ararat Zakarian, broke a finger. Other friends have been sending flowers and visiting while she recuperates.

Baiul’s accident caused waves in a sport known these days as much for high drama as glamour.

“This beautiful, pristine world we see on the ice, if it wasn’t dashed by Tonya Harding and her thugs in ‘94, sadly, it might have been dashed a little bit over the past few days with Oksana Baiul,” said ex-Washington Post reporter Christine Brennan, who wrote “Inside Edge,” a book chronicling a year of figure skating.

While Baiul’s wreck could have been much worse, her friends are concerned about more than just the bump on her head. The arrest capped two years of drifting from the structured, disciplined life of skating, the six-hour practices and endless repetition.

“Right now, she does what she wants to do. If she had a mother or dad there, she wouldn’t be the free spirit that she is right now,” says skating tour promoter Tom Collins, who brought Baiul to America to perform in his shows. “No one’s guiding her. That’s her main problem. She has nobody and it’s sad.”

Raised in a tiny apartment in a Ukrainian factory town, Baiul’s father left the family when she was 2. Her mother, who had encouraged her to one day skate to “Swan Lake,” died of cancer when her daughter was 13. The next year, her coach moved to Canada without a word, abandoning her as abruptly as her father.

She threw her skates in the trash, vowing never to skate again. But the draw of the ice was too great.

She went back, practicing and competing on her own until she met famed skating coach Galina Zmievskaya, who invited the child to live with her. Zmievskaya’s son-in-law was gold medalist Viktor Petrenko, who treated her like a sister and bought her new skating clothes.

With grace and artistry beyond her years, the waif-like girl rose above the Kerrigan-Harding controversy to capture the gold at Lillehammer, Norway, skating to her mother’s favorite, “Swan Lake.”

That night, she touched the medal and closed her eyes. “This is for you, Mama,” she said to herself, she recounts in her new autobiography, “Oksana: My Own Story.”

After the Olympics, she moved with Zmievskaya and Petrenko and their families to Simsbury, an affluent suburb in the wooded hills of Connecticut, where American skating coach Bob Young had opened a new rink. Her move coincided with the exploding popularity of her sport, now the second most popular on television after pro football.

At first, Baiul lived in a condominium next door to Zmievskaya. But last year, as she earned millions from touring and a sports clothing line, she bought a $450,000, nine-room house and the green Mercedes and filled her wardrobe with Versace and Chanel.

She made the cover of People magazine and posed in stiletto heels, a gaping T-shirt and pink hot pants for Esquire magazine.

In the meantime, Baiul’s skating has suffered.

Since the Olympics, she has grown five inches and gained about 10 pounds. Her womanly hips and chest have thrown her skating off balance.

With knee and back injuries, she was forced to withdraw from several competitions this season and placed poorly in another.

“She’s a teenager. She’s a really good, kind, generous kid … but like anything that resembles fame and fortune to a young person, those things are difficult to deal with,” says Shelly Schultz, Oksana’s agent with the William Morris Agency.

Making it more difficult is adapting to a new country, a new language, new freedoms and a new lifestyle, Schultz said.

“My God, I don’t know who the hell can handle that.”