WORLD SPORTS SCENE / RANDY HARVEY : Former Soviets Get No Respect in Germany

Baby, it’s cold outside the old Soviet Union, too.

Ukrainian pole vaulter Sergei Bubka has returned to his native land at least temporarily because he discovered that he must share the indoor facility he uses for winter training at Berlin with the public.

Presumably more damaging to his psyche, he and his family reportedly have received death and kidnap threats from Russian organized crime members who are working out of Berlin and want to share in Bubka’s wealth.

Gymnast Vitaly Scherbo fled his home at Minsk, Belarus, after burglars ransacked his apartment and stole more than $20,000, plus virtually everything else he owned, except for the six gold medals he won at Barcelona. Those were in the safekeeping of his parents.

But since arriving at Stuttgart, Germany, he has been treated with little respect.

“Suddenly, people didn’t recognize me any more,” he told a London newspaper, The European.

“On a tour in Germany, a hotel near Stuttgart cut off my phone because they were worried I would be making expensive calls to Russia. They refused to (fill) up the mini-bar and made my stay uncomfortable. And when I went shopping, I was followed by store detectives because rumors were being spread that all east Europeans are potential shoplifters.”

Bubka and Scherbo can trade stories with four Russian figure skaters who were victims of an attempted robbery during a stop at a Century Boulevard gas station after a recent competition at the Forum.

When the would-be robber stuck his gun through the window on the passenger side and demanded money, pairs skater Elena Valova displayed her courage--if not her intelligence--by applying a karate chop to his wrist. He dropped the gun inside the car and ran.

“It was like a movie,” said her partner, Oleg Vasiliev.

An opportunity for networking with prominent players in the business of sports will be available on Jan. 26-27, when the 15th International Sport Summit returns to the Beverly Hilton. Among reports scheduled are two dealing with the organization of soccer’s 1994 World Cup and Atlanta’s 1996 Summer Olympics.

Defending champion Surya Bonaly of France enters Europe’s figure skating championships this week at Helsinki, Finland, as the favorite, which already qualifies her for comeback-of-the-year honors considering her catastrophic 1992--fifth place in the Winter Olympics and 11th in the World Championships.

Under a new coach, former world champion Alain Giletti, who appears to be coexisting with the skater’s quirky mother, Bonaly has won her last three competitions and has beaten every world title contender but the United States’ Nancy Kerrigan.

After the European championships, Bonaly plans to work with French choreographer Shanti Ruchpaul, who contributed to the gold medal won last February by Russian ice dancers Marina Klimova and Sergei Ponomarenko. Ruchpaul’s mother, Eva, is a yoga master whose most famous student was skier Jean Claude Killy before the 1968 Winter Games.

The figure skating world is skeptical about German Katarina Witt’s announcement that she wants to compete in the 1994 Winter Olympics, particularly since she acknowledges that she will not try to match triple jumps with the younger skaters.

Witt, 27, should reconsider. She was at her best in 1987, got a gift from the judges to win her second Olympic gold medal the next year at Calgary, Canada, and has not worked since to improve much of anything besides her English. If she had decided to compete this winter in the German championships, she would have finished no higher than second behind Marina Kielmann.

Bonnie Blair, a three-time gold medalist in speedskating, said last week that she can hardly wait to begin training next fall in the $13.3-million Pettit National Ice Center. The United States’ first enclosed track opened on New Year’s Eve at Milwaukee.

Speaking by telephone from Butte, Mont., where she was preparing for the U.S. championships, Blair said: “It’s 11 below zero here. We go outside to skate for 20 minutes, then go back in and warm up again.”

Eric Flaim, who won a silver medal in the 1,500 meters in long track speedskating at Calgary, has switched to short track and will represent the United States in the World University Games, Feb. 6-14 at Zakopane, Poland.

Jogging with Bill Clinton during a New Year’s Eve seminar at Hilton Head, S.C., involving scholars, politicians, business leaders and journalists was four-time Olympian Edwin Moses.

“Somebody asked him, ‘How did you win? How did you win over and over and over?’ ” Clinton told USA Today. “He said he had a better capacity for pain. So I think he ought to run for president.”

Moses’ successor as the world record-holder in the 400-meter intermediate hurdles, Kevin Young of Reseda, has won every major track and field award for his 1992 season, including male athlete of the year from Track & Field News. Three of the first four athletes in the U.S. rankings went to L.A. area high schools and universities--No. 1 Young (Jordan, UCLA), No. 2 Quincy Watts (Taft, USC) and No. 4 Michael Marsh (Hawthorne, UCLA).

International Olympic Committee President Juan Antonio Samaranch will not quit in his attempt to give the IOC an egalitarian look.

Organizers of the 1994 Winter Games in Lillehammer, Norway, rejected his request to allow IOC members to live in the athletes’ village because the additional quarters would have been too expensive. They were assigned instead to a luxury hotel. But Samaranch since has asked organizers of the ’96 Summer Games in Atlanta to make room for the IOC’s 11 executive board members in the athletes’ village.

When Czechoslovakia split into two countries, former gymnast Vera Caslavska became president of the new Czech Republic’s Olympic committee. . . . On Lillehammer’s decision to compose medals next year primarily of stone, Norwegian cross-country skier Vegard Ulvang said: “The medals . . . could be troublesome for some IOC members during the presentations. Norwegian granite is extremely heavy.”