Skaters a duo on ice, on tour and at home

Pairs figure skaters Jenni Menno and Todd Sand have been friends for years. They shared a coach and a practice rink as they climbed through the competitive ranks.

They were teammates in Albertville for the '92 Olympics, and when their competition, early in the Olympiad was over, they hung out together at the Olympic Village.

But when they ditched their respective partners shortly thereafter to team up, "it was kind of scandalous," recalls Menno. "We were breaking up two of the national pairs champion teams and becoming one."

Ahem.

Actually, that two people so closely connected, with such similar and compatible skating styles, should have lasted so long as partners with different skaters seems the real shocker now. Once they teamed up, Menno and Sand began climbing the competitive rankings, ran off a three-year string as national champions and four straight top-five finishes in the Worlds, a rare showing for an American duo.

In Lillehammer in '94, as America's leading hopefuls in the pairs competition, "We had a team house near the arena, and, I don't know, one day Todd just asked me to marry him, a few hours before we were going to competition together," Menno says. "Of course, I said yes."

Far from being a distraction, the surprise was motivation for their best-ever Olympic finish - fifth. "We've got a lot of great memories from Lillehammer," she says. They married in July of '95.

An injury to Todd led to a disappointing 8th place finish at the '98 Nagano Olympics, but they rebounded to their best-ever finish, second, at the Worlds two months later.

That was their amateur competitive swan song: Sand and Menno then joined the brace of former medallists now highlighting the Stars on Ice tour, sponsored by Target, that glides into Albany's Pepsi Arena tomorrow night in the waning weeks of a national tour.

Also in the current touring complement are veterans Kristi Yamaguchi and Katarina Witt, phenoms Tara Lipinski and Ilia Kulik, and Canadian Olympian Kurt Browning, among others. Just last month, Todd Eldredge, fresh from competition in Salt Lake City, joined the tour.

"It's really exciting to have him here," says Menno. "He brings a really great energy to the production. And my husband's excited he's here. They get to play golf together on the road."

For the tour's only married couple, who take their home life to work in the daily grind of a bruising six-month tour schedule, "We love what we're doing, and we're really lucky to be doing it together," says Menno.

"It's definitely a lot easier for us," says Todd. "It works out just wonderful for us. It's a lot more difficult for Kristi, whose husband is a professional hockey player, or Kurt, whose wife is a ballet dancer.

"It's not just leaving the wife or husband at home. They have completely different travel schedules. We love being together."

Except, um, when they don't.

"Then the boys go off and play golf, and the girls hang around the pool," says Menno. "You just do different things, just recharging your batteries."

In the rarified world of competitive figure skating, at its top-most ranks, competition breeds familiarity, Sand says: seeing the same faces at competitions, sharing coaches and common complaints, physical and mental.

Putting the competition aside and joining an ensemble like Stars on Ice, many of whose performers are year-to-year returnees, "is just fantastic," he says.

"As well as you knew everybody before, you get to know each other even better being together so long on the road. It's kind of a clich , but this is our family on the road.

"When you get home after six months, you think, God, I'm glad that's over. But in a few days or so, I'll be thinking, I miss Todd, I miss Steve (Cousins). I miss the golf game."

But as for Sand and Menno, they'll always have each other. "Everybody tries to sneak home for a few days when we have a break on the road," says Sand. "But we live in Southern California, and since we're together, we don't feel the need. This is normal life for us."

What forges bonds among the entertainers is the sheer amount of ensemble work in the two-and-a-half-hour Stars performance. Befitting the title, all of the performers are showcased solo - or in the case of Menno and Sand and fellow pairs skaters Anjelika Krylova and Oleg Ovsiannikov, in duo.

But the show's energy derives from the mix-and-match quality of it, the production numbers putting the likes of Lipniski and Yamaguchi on the ice together and in harmony - no longer battling for medals.

"There's a competitive mind-set in every one of us," says Sand. "That's how we were brought up and what's made each of us successful. And it's that commitment that's such a big difference in ensemble.

"You want to bring a consistent level to every performance, and every audience deserves 110 percent. That's something every member of this cast is committed to. If we didn't do well every night, we'd all be disappointed. We push each other."

An additional push comes from choreographer Sandra Bezic, a veteran of Olympiads past, in the coaching box. The company assembles in October in Lake Placid to begin putting together each season's program. "Each of us work together with Sandra, and her choreography really suits us and complements our skating very much," says Menno.

Much of what gets the sport of figure skating noticed every four years, the technical element, is also on display in the art form of figure skating. Still, "What audiences see is different. It's not just a competitive performance, but a whole lot of different styles of performing brought together," says Sand. "Its energy is a lot more like a rock and roll show."

This year's tour has more of an easy-listening component, as Bezic and the show's co-creators have added a tribute to the music of the Carpenters. Meaning that the lone married couple get to skate "Close to You"? Nope.

" 'We've Only Just Begun'," says Menno. "It's one of our favorite numbers."

How long do they expect to be going? "We know we won't be doing this forever," says Menno. "We just try to enjoy it for now, and in a few years, we'll do something else."

"We love to go out on the ice every night and perform and hopefully make people smile," says Sand. "This is our fourth year with Stars On Ice, and we'd love to do it for a couple more years at least."

The current tour winds down in late April, and then it's back home. "The girls miss home a lot more than the guys," says Menno. "We try to spend as much time at home as we can when we're not on the road."

Now both in their late 30s, Sand and Menno eventually look forward to a family and settled life. Doing what? "I don't know," says Menno. "We have a couple years left to decide that."

In the meantime, says Sand, "I'm really having fun. And Todd can help me work on my golf game."