'Why? It Hurts So Bad. Why Me?'

By MARTHA DUFFY/DETROIT

The attack was sudden, the aftermath wrenching -- a lovely young woman brought low, down on the floor, screaming and crying out, "Why? Why? It hurts so much. Why me?" Nancy Kerrigan, 24, the most accomplished and graceful of the current crop of U.S. figure skaters, had just finished a practice session for last week's national championships in Detroit, when a man approached her from behind. Wordlessly, without warning, he delivered a violent blow to her right leg with a clublike object. Some witnesses thought it was a crowbar, others a baseball bat. No one knows for sure because the assailant vanished at once as a crowd gathered around the hysterical skater. Her father carried her off in his arms like a child. She was treated at a hospital and released.

Though she had been favored to win the national title, Kerrigan was forced to withdraw from the competition. Her doctors said she was suffering from * thigh contusions and swelling in the knee and was unable to control a simple hop, never mind a program that included several triple jumps. The assault cast a deep shadow on her ambition to earn a medal in next month's Olympics. However, even Kerrigan's rivals admitted that she deserved to be on the U.S. team, and on Saturday night officials in Detroit selected her over the runner- up, 13-year-old Michelle Kwan. But the poignant question was whether Kerrigan would be in any shape to train for the event. Her father said the close-knit Massachusetts family was in shock. Her mother said, "We're mad."

The vicious and mystifying attack brought to the fore the issue of safety for all athletes, particularly those in sports featuring individual competition in an atmosphere of relative openness and civility. The TV pictures of Kerrigan weeping and grimacing in pain were eerily familiar. Only last April, there were similar shots of tennis whiz Monica Seles, who was stabbed in the back in the midst of a match by a virulent fan of her rival, Steffi Graf. Seles has yet to return to competition. Her attacker was tried and freed on probation.

Such violence is rare, but more and more athletes are being forced to deal with the warped actions of obsessive fans. Katarina Witt, the sexy, stylish German star who won Olympic gold in 1984 and 1988, had to seek an injunction at a U.S. federal court in 1992 against a man who was terrorizing her with obscene and threatening letters. He was committed to a psychiatric hospital for three years.

Tonya Harding, who won the U.S. title in 1991, received a death threat last November during a competition in Portland, Oregon. She withdrew from the event and has traveled with bodyguards ever since. (It apparently has not distracted her; she won the women's championship at the nationals last weekend.) The vulnerability of even 200-lb. bruisers was demonstrated sensationally last November, when a parachutist disrupted the heavyweight championship bout between Evander Holyfield and Riddick Bowe in Las Vegas.

Kerrigan's misfortune was especially poignant. As a skater, she has always been an enigma. Blessed with a solid, assured technique -- high, ample leaps, a long, elegant line and instinctive musicality -- she is an erratic competitor. On good days she has won national titles and, in 1992, an Olympic bronze medal. On bad days she has lost her nerve and scaled down her program by simplifying or eliminating the tough jumps. Says TV commentator and former - Olympic gold medalist Dick Button: "She is unusually strong as a skater, more so than most women, but in other ways she is very fragile, not confident in herself."

Her low point came at the world championship last year in Prague. Expected to win, she went home without a medal. The failure changed her life. She intensified her training, did double and even triple run-throughs of her long program -- a feat requiring great reserves of physical stamina and mental energy -- and consulted a sports psychologist to combat what seemed like a will to lose.

Kerrigan is easily the most beautiful woman in the competition, with auburn hair and Hepburnesque cheekbones. Yet her striking appearance seems hardly to have registered on her truly unassuming nature. Her press conferences consist mostly of shrugging, making faces and giggling nervously. Facing the media on the day after the attack, she fought back tears as she underscored her hopes of getting to Lillehammer. "I was upset, hurt, angry," she said. "I really wanted to skate. I've been skating so well, and I wanted to go out and show everyone I didn't lose it."

Under the strain of trying to land Olympic berths, Kerrigan's fellow skaters turned remarkably blind eyes to her downfall and to the issue of security. Skater after skater mumbled that it could have happened to anyone, but that it certainly wouldn't happen again, least of all to them. Veteran Brian Boitano -- Olympics-bound after winning the silver medal in Detroit -- was one of the few to show concern, admitting at a press conference that he too has been the target of harassing fans.

In fact, security at the event was haphazard, especially at the practice rink, where Kerrigan was attacked. Her coach, Evy Scotvold, said he saw no security guards in the practice area just before the attack. U.S. Figure Skating Association officials were on the defensive, pointing out their elaborate system of accrediting everyone -- press, judges, officials, VIPS -- who had reason to be anywhere but in the spectator seats.

The question is whether sports such as skating and tennis will have to start treating every event like a gathering of foreign dignitaries. Very possibly. Security checks at tennis tournaments have multiplied since Seles was stabbed. The figure-skating world is still too stunned to have any retaliatory plan in mind, but change is inevitable. Says Claire Ferguson, president of the U.S.F.S.A.: "We shall have to seek out ways to protect our athletes."

Many in the world of sport find that a depressing prospect. Mary Carillo, a CBS tennis analyst, points out that both the Seles and Kerrigan incidents "happened on the site, at the workplace. That kind of threat creates a haunting and scary feeling for any athlete. One of the best parts about those sports is watching great athletes up close, watching them grunt and sweat. That may be taken away."

Not so long ago, skating meets had some of the intimate charm of horse trials or country fairs. Even today, no skater -- except one in the throes of a postdefeat pout -- is too big to sign autographs, accept a stuffed teddy bear or stop and chat with a thigh-high champion of tomorrow. Most practice sessions are like high school afternoon scrimmages: come along and stay behind afterward to hear from the source what it feels like to sail along the wind in a grand spread eagle. The end of all that may have begun last week.

With reporting by David E. Thigpen/New York