Petkevich Takes National Title

John Misha Petkevich turned in a brilliant free skating performance to win the senior men's competition at the United States Figure Skating Championships Friday night at War Memorial Auditorium in Buffalo.

Despite a fall and a faulty record player, Petkevich scored the first perfect mark given in freeskating since he won one in 1968. It earned Perkevich his first title after two years as runner up to now-retired Tim Wood.

Skating to the Rachmaninoff Second Piano Concerto. Petkevich had to alter his routine on the ice when the record missed and cut out some 12 seconds of music. Taking out two planned triple jumps, he made the transition so smoothly that the mistake did not keep one judge from awarding him a perfect 6.0 for composition and style. Five judges gave him 5.9 and the seventh a 5.8.

Chances for a perfect mark in the technical aspects of his skating vanished when he fell on his final jump with only seven seconds remaining in his five-minute program. He was attempting a double axle directly into a sitspin-a maneuver that has not been done in the Nationals for thirteen years.

Petkevich completely over-shadowed second-place Ken Shelley, and sixteen-year-old Gordie McKellan, who came in third. Petkevich won all seven first place votes in the compulsories on Thursday and thirteen of the fourteen votes cast in "Technical" and "Composition and Style" Friday.