1992 Winter Olympics: The Empire's Last Hurrah Former

Chalk it up to injuries. Or hard ice conditions. Or the elimination of the compulsory school figures. Whatever the explanation, the 1992 Olympics will be remembered for laying to rest one of skating's favorite axioms: all medals are preordained.

Coming into the men's competition, the odds-on favorite was Canada's Kurt Browning, a level-headed and energetic three-time world champion. But a disastrous tumble early in his short program effectively took Browning out of gold-medal contention, throwing the field open to a crop of skaters who have been perennial best men but never the bridegroom. The suspense was compounded by a rash of injuries that threatened to derail not only Browning's medal hopes but also those of his two main rivals, Victor Petrenko of the former Soviet Union and Todd Eldredge of the U.S. In the end, Petrenko capitalized on difficult jumps to take top honors, though his stiff finale offered more stumbles than magic. He didn't win the gold medal so much as he didn't lose it. Far more satisfying were the performances of the runners-up. Defying smug expectations, two lyrical skaters -- Paul Wylie of the U.S. and Czechoslovakia's Petr Barna -- claimed the silver and the bronze, respectively.

Considering the outcome of both the men's and the pairs' events, spectators could hardly tell whether they were witnessing the birth or the death of a golden era of skating among the former Soviets. For Petrenko, a Ukrainian, the accomplishment carried a special distinction, since the Soviet Union had never achieved an Olympic gold medal in the men's or women's competition.

By contrast, the pairs' competition was a skate-away as the two top couples performing under the Unified Team banner demonstrated what truly unified skating is all about. Natalia Mishkutienok and Artur Dmitriev captured the gold medal, flowing from one move to the next with such grace and precision that even two technical errors on her part did not detract from their artistry. It was the eighth consecutive win by a Soviet-trained pair. Now that state-sponsored training has undergone a meltdown in their homeland, there is a question whether this latest pampered pair will be the last of the line for a long time to come. For the honor of runner-up, only Canada's Isabelle Brasseur and Lloyd Eisler could have wrested the silver from the Unified Team's Elena Bechke and Denis Petrov. But two falls by Brasseur dashed their hopes.

Petrenko, 22, did not exactly stumble into his gold medal, but his long program was hardly the stuff dreams are made of. Early in his routine, Petrenko flailed his arms wildly to save a triple combination, then barely held on to a triple flip. From there he lost conviction, succumbing to his chronic habit of sagging in the final minutes. Wylie, by contrast, resisted his tendency to choke in major competitions and finally delivered a performance that enabled the judges to reward his brilliant artistry. A relative old man at 27, the gracious Harvard graduate capped his amateur career with the evening's only standing ovation.