HIS OWN QUADRANT UNIQUE JUMPS LEAVE GOEBEL IN MEDAL HUNT.

Byline: Paul Oberjuerge Staff Writer

SALT LAKE CITY - Timothy Goebel refuses to be pressured. Don't even try. Don't use the M (medal) word around him, don't mention that he is as surrounded by Russians as Von Paulus at Stalingrad, don't distract him with visions of the raucous reception the crowd tonight will give the only American with a chance to stand on the podium after the men's free skate.

``I still have a shot at winning a medal, but it's not something I'm thinking about,'' Goebel said after practice Wednesday at the Delta Center. ``It doesn't change anything. It doesn't change my thinking. I'm still going to go out and go for it and hope to skate as cleanly as possible, and if I end up with a medal that would be really cool. And if not, it's still been a really positive experience.''

Goebel stands third after the short program, thanks to the usual assortment of explosive jumps and more-emotive-than-usual presentation. But the jumping bean with the curly blond mop of hair is trying as hard as he can not to think about having someone drape an Olympic medal around his neck tonight at the Salt Lake 2002 Winter Games.

``Any time you go into a competition saying `I have to win a medal' or `I have to win,' '' he explained, ``not only do you have the pressure of having to perform well, you never know what's going to happen with how other people skate and how judges are going to see you. To put that pressure on top of it is not worth it.''

Goebel trails only Alexei Yagudin of Russia and Takeshi Honda of Japan in the standings, but the perception is he must defeat Honda tonight to have a chance at a medal. Right behind him are two more Russians, pre- Olympics gold favorite Evgeni Plushenko and Alexander Abt.

Goebel concedes Yagudin is probably not catchable. By anyone.

``He's in a great position,'' Goebel said of the Russian. ``Coming in he was one of the big gold-medal favorites, and unless he has a really rough free he's going to be the champion.

``I think it's great. I think he's a tremendous athlete as well as a great performer, and the Olympics has brought the best out in him. He deserves it.''

Not that Goebel is taking sides in the Yagudin-Plushenko feud, one of the hottest in skating. ``I don't really focus on them,'' he said. ``I just worry about what I'm doing. There's too much talk about Russians. I'm just doing the job.

``Whether you represent the United States or Russia or Canada or whatever, I'm just going to do a job.''

Goebel's performances often have a workmanlike aspect to them, and he will attempt to avoid that in his four-minute free skate tonight to Gershwin's ``An American in Paris.''

Goebel, 21, has been one of the planet's pioneers in skate jumping. He was the first American to land a quadruple jump in competition (in 1998), and the first to land three quads in one program (in 1999). On Tuesday, he was the first man to land a quad-salchow in the Olympics.

But that technical mastery has been dampened, over the years, by mechanical presentation, something Goebel and his coach of two years, Frank Carroll, have been working on almost ceaselessly.

``Last year, if I didn't hit my jumps, there was nothing to judge me on,'' he said before the U.S. nationals in Los Angeles last month. ``People criticized me for not really skating. They said I was jumping to music.''

Goebel moved from Illinois to Playa del Rey to train with Carroll in El Segundo, and the onetime mentor of Michelle Kwan put Goebel through finishing school, putting him into ballet and dance classes and knocking off the rough edges of a guy who approached skating more as a sport than a performance.

``It's still a work in progress,'' Carroll said, ``but I think the progress has been amazing.''

Still, he is fighting to get his presentation scores up there with his technical scores. On Tuesday, five judges scored him higher for ``required elements'' than for presentation. None of the nine judges gave him a higher mark for artistry.

Perhaps that is to be expected from a guy tinkering with a quad-quad combination, a skater who knocks off quad-toeloop, triple-toe, triple-toe combinations in practice. Goebel admits he wants to jump when he should be working on his hand movements.

Only a few days ago, Goebel figured to be one of three Americans vying for a medal tonight. But Michael Weiss and Todd Eldridge struggled in the short program and stand eighth and ninth heading into the free skate, and likely have no chance of getting into the top three.

Goebel's best finish in a world championship was fourth, last year. This is his first Olympics. He skates third-from-last, with Abt and Yagudin after him. Thus, he will know what he needs to beat Honda when he takes the ice.

Goebel is not thinking about medals, of course, but if he gets one tonight it would reinforce his status as the top American men's hope through, at least, 2006. He expects to retain his amateur status for the foreseeable future.

``I enjoy skating in shows and I like performing, but I love competing,'' he said. ``That's where I get the most satisfaction out of my skating is at competition.

``For some sick reason I like all the pressure and the adrenalin and the whole thing and that's what I like to do, so why would I give that up?''

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Timothy Goebel of the U.S. is in third place after the men's short program thanks in large part to his jumps, but he won't put added pressure on himself to medal.

Lionel Cironneau/Associated Press