Professional skating appeals to star's artistic side

It would be an exaggeration -- but not much of one -- to say that Ilia Kulik has been skating ever since he could walk.

He was 4 when he first put on ice skates. "Right now I'm 24, so that gives me 20 years on the ice. I've been skating pretty much all my life long," the Moscow-born skater said in a telephone interview from Seattle on the Target Stars on Ice tour that will bring him to Arco Arena on Saturday night.

Kulik began regular training at age 6, won the World Junior Championships before his 18th birthday and was 20 when he took the gold medal in the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan. He was the first male skater in 50 years to win the gold medal in his first Olympic appearance. (Dick Button in 1948 was the last until then.)

"I never used to think of it as a career," Kulik said. "It was just something I did very well. And it just went smoothly. When I started to win at International-level competition -- the Junior Worlds in '93, when I got the bronze medal -- that for me was a big step. I think that was the point I thought of making a career as a skater."

Kulik turned professional immediately after winning the 1998 Olympics.

"I thought it would be great to become professional after winning a gold medal," he said. "Also, I wanted to be a little more free, to experiment with styles.

"An Olympic performance, you pretty much prepare all your life long. You perfect the most difficult technical aspects and put it all together in one program for nine judges.

"As a professional skater, you try to create an artistic program and make people enjoy it. We are more connected with the audience.

"It's the same physically -- the program is four minutes long and it's demanding -- but you are not concentrating on landing four triple jumps and four combinations. You can concentrate more on the artistic aspect."

This is Kulik's fourth year with the Stars on Ice show. Two years ago in the show, he was asked to skate for the first time in a pairs performance and teamed with another Russian skater, Ekaterina Gordeeva. Last June, Kulik and Gordeeva became parents of a daughter, Elizaveta. Gordeeva is not participating in this year's tour, but she continues to skate, Kulik said. Beyond that, "I prefer not to discuss my private life," he said.

Just as he said he never really thought about making a career of skating, Kulik said he hasn't given much consideration to what he might do after his skating career has ended. Last year, he appeared in the movie "Center Stage," playing a dancer, and he said he enjoyed that experience very much.

"Taking some acting classes (to improve his artistic expression on the ice) opened my horizons, too, but it's really hard to combine a skating career and an acting career. Both are time-demanding," he said.

"I don't want to lose my ability in skating (by taking too much time away for acting). I'll keep going until I lose my interest in skating. I'm really in love with the sport. It's really hard to say when I would lose the interest."

Skaters -- particularly males -- can skate for many years. Of the Target Stars on Ice skaters, Katarina Witt is the grand old lady of the sport, at 37 -- but she is a rarity. Scott Hamilton, who founded the Stars on Ice show, retired last year at age 42 -- but only after a bout with testicular cancer, which took him off the ice for seven months in 1997, and an injured ankle that plagued him almost until the end. Hamilton, who remains as producer of the show, although no longer skating in it, said in an interview last year that Stars on Ice "tries to push the envelope of athleticism and artistry."

That's part of what draws Kulik to it. "It gives you the opportunity to explore more styles, to challenge yourself in performance. In the show, there are group numbers where everyone participates, and then a couple of solo numbers for each of the featured skaters. I have three solos and two group numbers. It's a big challenge, compared to amateur shows where you have two programs a year that you skate over and over.

"With Stars on Ice, there is a wider range of activity. At some point, it becomes both more demanding and more creative. Sometimes the choreographer asks you to do things you didn't know you could do. You can be asked to do hip-hop or tango ... it can be anything. And you've got to be prepared."

Kulik said he finds inspiration in Hamilton's dedication to the sport and to the show. "Scott was able to do this for 15 years, and overcame cancer and came back. He's really a phenomenon of skating. He's someone to look up to," Kulik said.

And will his time on the ice last as long as Hamilton's? "The big aspects are health and injuries," Kulik said. "You can keep yourself healthy and try to be rested and careful, but you can never tell when an accident will happen, and you can have to quit in an instant."

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Target Stars on Ice

With: Ilia Kulik, Tara Lipinski, Katarina Witt, Kristi Yamaguchi, Kurt Browning and others

When: 8 p.m. Saturday

Where: Arco Arena

How much: $35-$55