TIES THAT BIND : Kuchiki Family Pays Price in Time and Money While Daughters Chase Dream of Skating in Olympics

For Sashi Kuchiki, the Olympic dream began in a dim, long-forgotten ice rink in Japan, a rink illuminated by a single light.

Three decades later, Kuchiki is still pursuing that dream on ice, sometimes seven days a week, on well-lit, well-kept rinks all over Southern California.

Not longer himself, though. At 51, his Olympic hopes are long gone.

Now he skates for his daughters, Tamara, 14, and Natasha, 12. Both of the Canoga Park girls are rising stars in the skating universe.

Natasha, teamed with Richard Alexander, finished second in junior pairs in the nationals held earlier this year in Baltimore. That followed first-place finishes in both the Southwest Pacific and Pacific Coast regionals. She also finished first at the Southwest level and third in the Pacific Coast competition in junior singles, enabling her to skate in the nationals in that category as well.

Natasha finished last in Baltimore in singles, however. “Trying to do both,” she said, “was just too much.”

Her sister was senior ladies champion in the Southwest competition. Tamara came in fifth in the Pacific Coast regionals, leaving her as a spectator at the nationals where she served as an alternate.

Both have big summers ahead, however. Tamara will be going to Oklahoma later this month to skate in the U. S. Olympic Festival. Natasha is going to Sun Valley, Ida., to take part in a pairs seminar with a squad from the Soviet Union.

None of this comes cheaply.

Enter Sashi and his wife Denise. Both spend their working hours giving skating lessons to support their daughters’ $35,000-a-year habit.

“We live, sleep and breathe skating,” Denise said. “It’s our life. My husband hasn’t been on a vacation since 1981. We are self-employed and the lessons are our income.

“But it’s worth it. It keeps Tamara and Natasha out of trouble. Skating is a healthy activity. And it has given them the chance to travel and see things they wouldn’t otherwise see.”

For the Kuchikis, the family ties are practically never broken.

On a typical day, all four can be found at the Pickwick Ice Arena in Burbank, Sashi in one corner giving a lesson, Denise in another corner doing the same, while the girls work with their own coach, Wendy Olson.

Hectic?

Read on.

Because Natasha is training in both singles and pairs, and, because her partner, Todd Sand, and her coach, John Nicks, live in Orange County, Denise spends much of her time skating around traffic on the San Diego Freeway.

The family schedule goes as follows: Up at 6 a.m. . . . Leave the house at 6:30 . . . On the ice at Pickwick at 7:15 . . . At 9, Denise and Natasha leave for a rink in Costa Mesa where Sand and Nicks are waiting . . . At 1, the Kuchikis are again on the freeway for the long haul back home to the Valley for school.

But things are getting better, the Kuchikis have cut their girls’ skating back to six days a week.

Because of the incredible demands of their sport, both girls have left public school and are learning via correspondence courses.

They are not even allowed to use the family pool too often because of concern by their parents that utilizing the muscles called upon for swimming could affect their skating.

Tough life? Both girls sometimes think so.

“I sometimes feel I’d like to have a regular life,” Tamara said, “going to school, getting other friends.”

When the girls get down, it’s pep-talk time.

That’s Denise’s department.

“They ask themselves, is it worth it?” their mother said. “ We just ask them, what are the goals you are aiming for?”

Both girls say they always come back to the conclusion that the potential prizes are worth the price. They love the travel opportunities skating brings them and the presents their parents offer as carrots on a stick, payable upon victory in whatever competition they are facing.

“Everybody gets lazy,” Denise said. “Everybody needs to be pushed, no matter how great a skater they might be. They need to be reminded what can be accomplished. You need to keep their confidence and their willpower going.”

When Denise isn’t giving her daughters pep talks or a ride to the rink, occasionally simultaneously, she’s busy recording music or working on dresses for their routines.

The parents do everything but coach the kids. So why not take that additional step and save a little money?

“It’s better to have someone else coach them,” Denise explained. “Kids tend to tune their parents out. This way, they get more accomplished. They are always trying to please their coaches.”’

Not that Sashi and Denise just sit silently on the sidelines.

“It’s hard to satisfy us because we are also coaches,” Denise said. “While other parents may be happy about what their kids have done, we are not as happy as maybe we should be because we know more technically. We may be too critical. We praise them, but we don’t leave the corrections out either.”

Both Denise and her husband say they had no skating goals for their daughters when the kids first put on skates, each at about 12 months.

“Putting them on the ice was a good way to sort of baby-sit them at the time,” Denise said, “while we were busy skating. Then, things just kind of happened. We put them in competition and they won. We put them in more competition and they won again. Then, they wanted to get better. It just took off.”

While the girls seemed destined for the ice, that was certainly not the case for their father. A native of Japan, Sashi’s sport was baseball. He was a catcher until injuring his shoulder in his teens.

Desiring to remain physically active, he turned to skating at 17, a strange choice for an athlete who had specialized in a position not noted for its finesse.

Sashi found other obstacles barring him from the ice.

“They told me skating was a high-society sport,” he said. “It was for the rich. My family was not rich. I said, nonsense. I was going to prove to them I could succeed.”

And he did.

Despite poor coaching, poor lighting and rented skates, Sashi eventually made it all the way to the Olympic Games after winning a national championship in Japan in junior competition.

While Sashi hovers over his kids, he never wanted his family to watch him skate.

“I was too shy,” he said.

So he told them to stay away. His family (including two brothers and two sisters) would ignore his request and sneak in to watch him.

For a long time, Sashi never knew that. He would compete and then bring his trophy home. How did you do? members of his family would ask.

Here, he would answer, meekly showing the trophy.

His family would feign surprise, hiding the fact they’d watched him win it.

Sashi never actually skated in the Olympics. He came to the 1960 Winter Games in Squaw Valley, Calif., as an alternate. But he liked what he saw well enough to stay, settling in Sacramento and, eventually, the San Fernando Valley.

He became a professional skater, joining the Ice Capades where he stayed for 19 years. It was with that production that he met his Canadian-born wife, Denise, who performed in the Ice Capades for 14 years after winning a gold medal in dance in the first Canadian Winter Games, held in 1967.

The only Games the pair thinks about now are those their daughters might be in. But what if it never happens? What if the girls were to decide they preferred a life off the ice?

“I would be sad,” Denise said. “Especially after all the money we’ve put out. All the sacrifices. They have a lot of talent. “

Sashi offered similar feelings.

“We didn’t know what would happen when they started skating,” he said, “but we’re in too deep now. We can’t go back.

“For them to reach the Olympics would be a dream. But it’s their dream now.”