Good with figures John Nicks, in his seventh decade, commands respect throughout the sport. January 10, 2002 Los Angeles -- They no longer are the fresh- faced teen-agers forever frozen in our memories. Tai Babilonia and Randy Gardner are in their 40s now, half a lifetime removed from the place and time when they stole our hearts. They are at the same age John Nicks was when they first nervously approached him as a pair of intimidated kids. Three decades later they still hold him in awe. "I'm 43," Gardner said, "and I still call him Mr. Nicks." "He'll always be Mr. Nicks, I don't care how old I am," Babilonia said. "I could never call him anything else. All his former skaters still call him Mr. Nicks. It's a respect thing. "Respect he's earned." John Nicks is a small man, not much bigger than some of the skaters he coaches. His trademarks are the blue parkas he wears on the ice, souvenirs from various Olympic coaching positions, that appear at times on verge of swallowing him whole. Yet for parts of five decades, Nicks has cast a long and imposing shadow over American figure skating. "Mr. Nicks has had a huge impact on U.S. skating," said Doug Williams, a pairs skater on the 1990 U.S. World Championships team. This week's U.S. Figure Skating Championships are in part a testament to that impact. Perhaps more than anyone, Nicks, a world- champion pairs skater for Great Britain who settled in Costa Mesa, is responsible for the shift in power in American skating from the East to California. And it was Nicks, along with Frank Carroll, another Southern California coach, who first envisioned the sport's potential to reach the broad audience it has today. "Mr. Nicks," Gardner said, "is an institution." But not a museum piece. At an age when most coaches are working on their memoirs, Nicks, 72, remains one of the world's foremost coaches, a man clearly still on top of his game, as sharp and fresh as he was when Pasadena teen-ager Peggy Fleming skated for him in the 1960s. In a sport that he has helped change dramatically over the past 40 years, Nicks has evolved and thrived without compromising his principles. "Each year at our convention we have these long debates," Williams said. "And then Mr. Nicks will get up and say about two words and it's over. Mr. Nicks just commands the room." Nicks is confident his latest protégé, Sasha Cohen, 17, from Laguna Niguel, will do likewise at in tonight's ladies short program at Staples Center. Another parka? Should Cohen earn a spot on the U.S. Olympic team this week, Nicks will pick up a U.S. team coaching assignment for a 10th consecutive Olympic Games and yet another blue parka. Overall, Salt Lake City would be Nicks' 12th Games as either an athlete or coach, an Olympic career that stretches across parts of seven decades. "He just loves what he's doing," Fleming said, "and that rubs off on his skaters." It is that passion that drives Nicks from his Costa Mesa home to the rink in Aliso Viejo by 6:30 a.m. weekday mornings. "I'm always learning," he said. "My philosophy is to try and have different approaches with choreography and presentation so they all have their own personality and their own strengths. "I would not like somebody to say 'Yeah, I know John Nicks coaches her because that's his way.'" Nicks' skaters and rival coaches have this much in common - all have been kept at an arm's length by a coach determined to keep his distance. He coached Babilonia and Gardner for nearly 10 years yet has never been to Randy's house and only once to Tai's. He has been to Cohen's home three times. "On business matters, not social," Nicks said. "I don't make friends very quickly, it takes a little time. "Probably I just need more time to be comfortable with people. Maybe it's a strength, maybe it's a weakness. I think it's a little bit of the English, the reservation. "My relationships with families are very professional, very business. I'm not very involved in their social life at all. "I have a very strong belief that when a parent brings a young person to the ice rink they bring them in my care and I conduct their life at the ice rink. When they leave it they have their mother and father. It's the way I operate. Again, it's maybe that English thing." English guinea pig Nicks grew up in Brighton, a rowdy, small resort city on the English Channel, where his father owned a pair of sporting goods stores. A talented athlete, he might have pursued soccer were it not for his father's penchant for using Nicks and his younger daughter Jennifer as guinea pigs for the latest in sports equipment. "We were always trying different things out," Nicks recalled. "One of our stores was about 200 yards from the ice rink. He would take us down and we'd try different skating equipment. "Then we caught the bug." Their father's experimenting would produce one of the world's top pairs teams. John was 18, Jennifer 15, when they finished eighth at the 1948 Olympic Games in St. Moritz, Switzerland, where film star Paulette Goddard helped sweep the snow off the ice of the outdoor rink before they competed. They won the silver medal at the 1950 World Championships, then added bronze medals at the 1951 and 1952 Worlds. But they were again denied an Olympic medal in Oslo, Norway, in 1952, finishing fourth. "We probably should have got a medal if we skated right," Nicks said. They finally won the World gold in 1953, then Nicks moved to South Africa where he skated in a traveling ice show for five years. During a show in Johannesburg, Nicks' skate got caught in a crack backstage. He broke a bone in his foot and was in a cast for 10 weeks. "I didn't have anything to do," Nicks said. "The manager of the rink said 'You might as well get to work.' So I did a little coaching. And, of course, I got hooked." Fate intervenes But in 1960 he put coaching on hold when, fearing turmoil in South Africa, he returned to England and took over the family business. A year later Jennifer, married and living in British Columbia, suggested he take a working vacation in Canada and help out in some coaching clinics. Nicks was sitting in his sister's living room watching television on Valentine's Day when a news bulletin came on the screen. A plane carrying the U.S. team to the World Championships in Prague, Czechoslovakia, had crashed just miles from a refueling stop in Brussels, Belgium, killing all 72 passengers and crew. "I was in shock," Nicks said. Two weeks later Nicks was invited to replace Bill Kipp, a Southern California coached killed in the crash. "Of course, it's sort of ironic that such a tragedy gave me this opportunity," he said. "I've also felt strange about that. It's something I've never shaken." Ice dancer Yvonne Littlefield was supposed to be on the flight, but she and her partner, Roger Campbell, broke up before the U.S. Championships. Campbell and his new partner were killed in the crash. Years later Littlefield and Nicks met and eventually married. "It's something that we're always aware of," Yvonne Nicks said. "The crash (was) really is an eerie feeling," John Nicks said. "We would have never met if it weren't for the crash." In the spring of 1961 Nicks arrived in Southern California. "In those days when you thought of Southern California," Nicks said, "you thought of tennis." Nicks would change that. Ice education He began coaching at Iceland in Paramount where Nicks came under the wing of Frank Zamboni. "He was wonderful to me," Nicks said. "He taught me the business of ice skating." By 1968, Nicks produced his first Olympians, the pairs team of JoJo Starbuck and Ken Shelley. By 1972, Nicks' skaters were dominating the U.S. Championships, winning five titles, including Shelley's victory in the men's competition and he and Starbuck's third consecutive pairs win. A few days before leaving for the 1972 Olympics in Sapporo, Japan, Nicks was approached by Babilonia and Gardner. Under Nicks' tutelage, Babilonia and Gardner won four consecutive U.S. pairs titles and the 1979 World gold medal. Television loved them. The nation would come to know them on a first-name basis: Tai and Randy, America's favorite teen-agers. "With Mr. Nicks, the story of his success is that he develops not just skating champions but personalities," Williams said. The pair was favored a year later in Lake Placid, N.Y. But an Olympic medal would continue to elude Nicks when the pair was forced to withdraw from the Games because of a groin injury to Gardner. "I was disappointed for them, not for me," Nicks said. "He's pretty tough, but that one affected him," Yvonne Nicks said. In recent years he's coached Jenni Meno and Todd Sand to three U.S. titles, a silver and two bronze World Championship medals and a pair of Olympic top-eight finishes. In his sixth decade of coaching, Nicks shows no signs of slowing down, either at the rink or away from it: while fishing off the coast of Baja last summer he caught a 220-pound marlin. "He's not in retirement mode," Yvonne said. He would like to coach at least another four years when Cohen could contend for the gold at the 2006 Olympics. "I keep sort of committing to the next Olympics and then they come and go," he said. Yet it is not the pursuit of Olympic gold that drives on Nicks. "If you're going to be in the coaching business, you can't get frustrated," Nicks said. "You're always learning from past and always looking forward to the future. You're always looking forward and believing things get better."