Without a doubt, the skaters looked tired.

Long faces had replaced the smiles of competition, and the four men out on the ice appeared to lumber about more than they appeared to skate.

But for Todd Eldredge, the reigning American male skater, the 45 minute practice session set aside for the men's singles competitors, was proving even more bothersome.

From rink-side at the Nassau Veterans Memorial coliseum, all one could tell was that he was having trouble with his skates.

Finally, the mixture of fatigue and frustration becoming too much for him to ignore, he departed the ice and headed back to the nearby dressing room to either find another pair of skates or pack it in for the afternoon.

Re-emerging 20 minutes later, he salvaged a few jumps, but then had to leave the ice to make way for the second set of four skaters in need of practice.

Throughout the Goodwill Games final four days here in Nassau, a period during which figure skating held center stage, a scene like this was the norm rather than the exception.

Looking on as Eldredge, Steven Cousins, of Great Britain, and Timothy Goebel and Michael Weiss of the United States leave the ice, Russian Oleg Ovsiannikov is sympathetic.

"I think most of the competitors here have just come off major competitive tours and are very tired," he said.

"Right now, in the summertime, if you are a skater what you want most is holiday time.

"So many couples are looking forward to going on to vacation from here, or just want to go home, and that breeds its own frustrations," Ovsiannikov, who partners with Anjelika Krylova in the ice dancing competition, continued.

"At the same time, doing well in the Goodwill Games is something that really means a lot to us."

Of the nearly 1,500 competitors who came to the New York metropolitan area during the just concluded Goodwill Games, it was perhaps the skaters who were the most hard-pressed to perform at their peak.

While many of the events, like track and field, soccer, diving, and vollyball, are essentially spring and summer sports, for the skaters the Games came at the end of a very long season that began last September, culminated in the Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan this past February, and stretched on for several more months.

"You don't really coach anymore when it gets down to crunch time in a competition like this," said Frank Carroll, coach and choreographer for Olympic silver medalist Michelle Kwan.

"My job here at the Goodwill Games has been to just keep Michelle going and to keep encouraging her. At the same time, as always, I have to keep an eye on her technique and help her remain at the top of her game."

Looking on as his charge continued her own practice session alongside competitors Maria Butyrskaya, of Russia, Laetitia Hubert, of France, and Anna Rechnio, of Poland, later in the day, Carroll watched intently as Kwan proceeded to practice a series of fairly difficult jumps.

"To do a clean program is tough at any time of year," he said. "But this time of year, none of the skaters is in the greatest of shape. It's the middle of the summer, after all.

"So as far as the Goodwill Games are concerned, the figure skating is not an event that's earth-shattering -- everyone is up against the same challenges -- but it's still important to do well here.

"And when it comes to someone like Michelle, if they don't hit the technical stuff, that's disaster."

After a few days of visiting both practice sessions and competitions, a spectator can begin to see certain patterns emerge. In the case of Michelle Kwan, for instance, rehearsals were almost a carbon-copy of the real competition. Every move, the location of every jump, and every glide, transpired in the evening just as it had in the early afternoon.

In other cases, notably among the men and the pairs skaters, what one saw at the practice skates were mere snippets of their long and short programs.

"It's really, really hard to do anything more than that," said Anton Sikharulidze, who, with fellow Russian Elena Berezhnaya, is considered to be the top pair skater in the world right now.

"We've never experienced this kind of competition before so late in the season, so when we do get a chance to practice, we've been concentrating on small parts of our over-all program.

"You know, we are all pretty much at the point where we have enough of our individual concetration left to practice our short programs pretty much straight through, but the long program is tough."

No stranger to overcoming obstacles, Anton's partner, Elena Berezhnaya, returned to competition only fairly recently, her skull and brain having been punctured by her former partner's skate during a practice accident.

Given the injury, given the fatigue all of the skaters were experiencing and the pressure of performing at one's peak against world-class competitors, a number of reporters marveled at Elena's almost other-worldly ability to put everything aside and maintain her balance so well when thrown very high by her partner.

"Today was not good balance," she laughed when asked how she did it.

"Lots of practice and exercise," she added, in heavily accented English.

What kind of exercise, a reporter wanted to know.

"Mmmm... that's a secret," she smiled.

"When it comes to a competitive season, generally speaking, we try to do a little bigger part of our long program each week," Anton Sikharulidze interjected, explaining the goal of the skater in the practice session.. "If you do that, skating some parts every day, then if it comes to the point were you have to change a portion of the program, it's easier, because in time you've skated your competitive piece, over and over and over again.

"To have a truly good practice, you have to go out there and feel each moment of a reach competition. If it's going well, you feel your conditioning and you feel confident that you will perform well later that night... when it is for real."

Of course, some of the patterns that emerged over the course of the figure skating competition were almost schizophrenic. A number of skaters looked fantastic in practice, only to come up short later, in the real competition.

Takeshi Honda, of Japan, for instance, landed a quadruple jump several times in practice, only to miss it before a crowd of 10,000 during the men's long program.

"I was very comfortable with the jump, but in the end I guess I was a little scared [doing it in competition] and found it hard to overcome the fatigue. I just didn't have the strength there when I needed it.

"It's been kind of a challenging season for me anyway, for a number of reasons," Honda continued. "In the last year I've changed coaches, moved to the United States, and so, everything's new."

"Normally, if you train hard, it all comes together during the competition," Oleg Ovsiannikov said. "But you never know what might happen. In different events it's different things."

"It's difficult to say what the correlation is between practice sessions and the competition," offered the United States' Michael Weiss.

"Things could be going well in practice, but then you have to factor in the fact that there's an awful lot of adrenalin and an awful lot of excitement that comes into play in competition.

"Some skaters use that to their advantage. Some can't control it."

Of all the skaters competing at the Goodwill Games, Michael Weiss was probably having the most difficult time getting into his usual competitive state of mind.

You see, his wife Lisa, who accompanied him to the Games from their Virginia home, is seven months pregnant with their first child, a daughter whom they'll name Annie Mae.

"It really hasn't been too difficult to focus on the Goodwill Games, but you know, at the same time, I think I'm always focusing on the baby.

"On the one hand you've got this incredible competition which you're getting motivated for, and then there's... real life."

Later, as Weiss prepared to compete in the second half of the men's long program, his wife, Lisa, stayed close to the ice, clapping as he skated by during his warm-up, and clasping her hands in prayer as he headed off toward center ice.

"Once this is over, my main intention is not to be away from home too much," he told a reporter before going out to skate.

"I think the timing of Annie's arrival couldn't be better actually, because it will coincide with the period I usually set aside to work over things.

"You pretty much have to come up with a new short and a new long program every year, because you don't want to be the same skater year in and year out."

As for what his future will hold in terms of his career, Weiss, allowed that "it's hard to say."

"For instance, while competing in the next winter Olympics, right here in the United States would be amazing, getting that opportunity depends on a lot of factors -- and it is four years away after all.

"I think in the interim though, my goal is always the same, to go out there and attempt to achieve my ultimate performance.

"That, ultimately, is the biggest motivator in competition, it's what gets you over your tiredness and gets you on the ice in the middle of a July heat wave when you'd more likely want to be outside or on the beach somewhere," Weiss said.