For Pond Show, Ice Will Be Red-Hot With Talent : Spectacle: Oksana Baiul, Brian Boitano, Elvis Stojko and Nancy Kerrigan are but a few of the world-class skaters who will perform in Anaheim this evening.

No one can accuse producer Tom Collins of skimping on talent for the Tour of World Figure Skating Champions.

A mix of veterans and newcomers, the Anaheim-bound tour features such Olympic champions as Brian Boitano, Viktor Petrenko, Oksana Baiul and the dance teams of Marina Klimova-Sergei Ponomarenko and Oksana Gritschuk-Evgeny Platov. World champions include Elvis Stojko, Jill Trenary, Lu Chen, pairs team Isabelle Brasseur and Lloyd Eisler and dancers Isabelle and Paul Duchesnay and Maia Usova and Alexander Zhulin. Also skating will be Nancy Kerrigan.

“We have a cast of thousands,” Collins said recently from the Salt Lake City airport as the troupe headed to Anchorage, Alaska.

An exaggeration, perhaps, but a well-founded one. With a roster of more than 30 skaters from six countries, the tour boasts more top-name performers than any other ice show, with 20 Olympic and 47 World Figure Skating Championships medals to its credit.

Also coming to The Pond tonight is a team with local ties: two-time U.S. pairs champions and current World bronze medalists Jenni Meno and Todd Sand, who train at the Ice Chalet in Costa Mesa and are on their third world tour.

“It’s a homecoming for us,” Meno said from the Anchorage leg of the 70-stop, three-month-plus tour. “It’s very exciting. We’ll have a lot of friends there, and it’s neat to be skating in front of your hometown crowd, people who are supportive of you.”

For Sand, being part of the ensemble is the realization of a goal.

“When you’re a skater coming up, you always dream of being on this tour, and now we are.”

The duo will perform what Meno calls a “tragic, passionate number” to the music of the Roy Orbison-k.d. lang rendition of “Crying.” The choice may seem a bit ironic for Meno and Sand, who are getting married July 22.

The show, which runs 2 1/2 hours including intermission, squeezes 24 acts of various musical and skating styles between 15-minute opening and closing production numbers.

“We are the only professional tour that has amateur skaters performing in it,” said Collins, who has worked out an agreement with the sport’s amateur governing bodies to let skaters perform without losing their eligibility to compete. “Where else can you go and see the past, present and future Olympians? You’ll be seeing the skaters here who will be going to Nagano [Japan, in 1998].”

Also featured in the current cast is World bronze medalist Philippe Candeloro of France, whose crowd-pleasing antics the past two years included skating bare-chested to the theme from “Rocky.” This year’s shirtless skate is to the fast-paced “Black Betty” by Ram Jam..

“I try to change the mind of everybody,” Candeloro said. “Most of the skaters skate to classical music [in competition], so for the exhibition, I skate to hard-rock music.”

The tour, which played Anaheim last year, is a first-class event behind the scenes too.

Cast members stay in top hotels and travel with an athletic trainer and exercise equipment. They can also occupy their backstage time playing table tennis or shooting pool or playing darts.

“I’ve added free weights this year,” said Collins, who has produced each of the 15 tours held since 1975. “They have a lot of free time. It keeps them in shape--at the end of the tour they’re in better shape than at the start!”

* The Tour of World Figure Skating Champions begins at 8 p.m. today at The Pond, 2695 E. Katella Ave., Anaheim. Tickets are $30 and $45 and are available through Ticketmaster at (714) 740-2000 and the box office at (714) 704-2400.