2002 U.S. FIGURE SKATING CHAMPIONSHIPS: CONFLICT SOLVED, TOP COUPLE AIMS FOR TITLE.

Byline: Brian Dohn and Rich Hammond Staff Writer

Some Thai chicken salad, a slice of strawberry-banana cheesecake and a purging of the souls. That, or something like that, is the recipe that kept the top United States pairs team together.

Kyoko Ina and John Zimmerman won the U.S. Championships the last two years, finishing second in their first year together in 1999. But problems at the World Championships, a ninth-place finish followed by a pair of seventh-place finishes, nearly was the end for this different-ends-of the-spectrum tandem.

Something was missing in their routines. Each was a great skater, but they mixed as well as Los Angeles and an outdoor ice rink. The only thing that saved their partnership was a weekly luncheon at the Cheesecake Factory after workouts in Hackensack, N.J., that began in March.

``We decided that there's only so much that the coach can help us, and we decided that we needed to help ourselves,'' said Ina, who teams with Zimmerman to start an expected march to the Olympics with the pairs short program today at Staples Center. The free skating program is Friday. The top two teams earn spots on Team USA.

``We gossip about ourselves,'' Ina said. ``The first thing we usually do, because we get distracted, is we talk about our skating and what worked that day or that week. What we worked on. What we accomplished and how one another other is feeling.''

The conflict is understandable given the way the two were virtually force-fed to one another in their quest to become the top pairs team in the world.

Zimmerman is from Birmingham, Ala.; Ina lives in Greenwich, Conn., but considers herself a New Yorker.

``I think the clashing part would be the way we went about things,'' Zimmerman said. ``I'm like a lava lamp. I move slow and have that kind of mentality and Kyoko wants it done five minutes ago. That's how it is on the ice sometimes.''

--LaRoche rules: Nick LaRoche, a resident of Redondo Beach, hit a perfect triple lutz-triple toe loop combination to start his long program and survived two small stumbles to overtake Shaun Rogers of Baltimore, Md., and win the men's junior competition at the Sports Arena.

Rogers led after Monday's short program but fell on two jumps and left plenty of room for LaRoche to win, since the long program counts for two-thirds of the final score. But when LaRoche took the ice, he didn't know about Rogers' struggles.

``I was in the back with my headphones on full blast so I wouldn't hear any of the marks,'' LaRoche said. ``Watching him would have played with my mental focus.''

La Roche twice took a step after landing jumps, but the strong early combination gave him momentum and a victory in his adopted home town. LaRoche moved from Gardner, Mass., in June to train with Ken Congemi and Russ Witherby, and LaRoche said his improvement has been substantial.

``It has helped me tremendously because I needed to focus on training,'' La Roche said. ``In the past I had a tendency to not train for the long program very well. Ken has taught me to be focused all the way through and skate like a champion so nobody can sneak in on me.''

LaRoche, who finished seventh in the junior division in the past two U.S. Nationals, will move to the senior level, along with Rogers and third-place Benjamin Miller of St. Paul, Minn. Rogers had been recovering from tendinitis in his right Achilles tendon and a bruised tailbone.

``I felt I did pretty good, considering that I had a bad warmup,'' Rogers said. ``I think I was a little tense.''

Rogers and Miller both fell while trying to land triple axels.

``I felt fine going up,'' Miller said. ``I land that jump every day.''

In the novice dance competition, Loren Galler-Rabinowitz and David Mitchell of Boston finished first in the original dance and maintained their overall lead going into today's free dance final. Kendra Goodwin and Chris Obzansky of Delaware are in second place.