End of the Winter's Tale

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Afterward, Kerrigan said, "For me, in my mind and my heart I won. I've learned a lot about myself these last couple of months. There are always some doubts, but I didn't let them enter this year." Others were not so restrained. Her coaches, Evy and Mary Scotvold, refused to utter Baiul's name at a postcontest press conference -- she was instead "the first-place girl." Claire Ferguson, president of the U.S. Figure Skating Association (U.S.F.S.A.), snapped, "Nancy doesn't have that sassy look that Oksana has." It didn't help matters that Baiul's coach, Galina Zmievskaya, marched around wearing the gold medal and boasted, "It's mine."

Kerrigan should be proud of her cleanly skated performance. She had energy to burn and was perhaps hampered by statelier-than-thou choreography. If they awarded prizes for costumes, she would have prevailed. Her dress, designed as always by Vera Wang, had the kind of unobtrusive elegance that enhances rather than jars a performance. By contrast, Baiul wore a fussy pink concoction trimmed with fake fur that broke her line. Most of the other dresses were nightclub glitz.

People who don't know a Lutz from a spread eagle know that Kerrigan won the money jackpot. Already comfortable from endorsements, she adds major deals with Disney and Ray-Ban and is poring over offers from cosmetics makers, toy companies and bedding outfits. Reebok and Seiko, who had the wit to sign her up before she became a household name, have intensified their wooing. The former outfitted her family with Norway-proof togs; the latter held a dinner in her honor in the farmhouse near Oslo where the Israelis and Palestinians held their secret peace talks.

Another teenager, China's Chen Lu, won the bronze; considering that she is 17 and from a country where the international rules were unknown as recently as 1980, she showed authority and what her coach calls bing gan, a feeling for skating. Maybe the skating establishment should see whether China's homegrown code also has bing gan; it cannot be more Mandarin than the lofty formulas that are prevalent now in skating, and it might conceivably create fewer messes.

There were other high and low moments. Harding's sense of theater did not desert her. Shortly after taking the ice, she popped a jump and immediately confronted the judges with what appeared to be a ragged bootlace. Sure enough, they gave her a second chance -- it was reportedly the fourth time she had had to relace during a competition, a problem nearly unknown to other skaters. Also, she must return to Portland, Oregon, without having discovered "the gold" that she envisioned for her supporters. She must face a U.S.F.S.A. disciplinary hearing and a grand jury investigation into the Kerrigan attack.

Harding seemed to draw out the worst in some journalists. According to the Dallas Morning News, reporters for the Detroit Free Press, New York Times and San Jose Mercury News were caught by another journalist breaking into Harding's Olympic E-mail and directory, checking her list of messages. A spokesman said the U.S. Olympic Committee was satisfied that none of Harding's messages were read.