SportsLine wire reports

SALT LAKE CITY -- When they began skating together nine years ago, Danielle and Steve Hartsell could only dream of growing up to win the U.S. Figure Skating Championships pairs title.

They grew into champions Friday night.

The siblings from Westland, Mich., who have been on the rise since finishing second in a regional intermediate competition in 1990, easily won the senior crown with a strong display of lifts, jumps and throws. Danielle, 18, and Steve, 21, added the title to their 1997 junior world crown and 1995 gold medal in the U.S. juniors.

"In the past few years, we matured as people, and that shows in our skating," Steve said. "We took a performance like this and made it a national championship performance. It shows how we've matured as people and skaters."

Kyoko Ina, who won the last two nationals with Jason Dungjen, finished second with new partner John Zimmerman. They were sloppy, as might be expected from a duo that has been together for only a few months. Both went down on a split triple twist when Ina crashed into Zimmerman's chest and he tripped over her.

"First of all, we need to evaluate what went wrong," Ina said. "Is it an element in the program, the way things are set up, or were we nervous?

"WE HAVE NEVER, EVER missed the twist. We tried to pick up the rest of the program, but because of that we were a little bit late."

Still, they are headed to next month's world championships -- Ina's fifth appearance at worlds, and Zimmerman's second -- along with the Hartsells and third-place finishers Laura Handy and J. Paul Binnebose.

The Hartsells also won the 1997 junior world crown. (AP)

Earlier Friday, America's new wave of ice dancers was identified, and it includes three men not born in the United States.

The best of them, Russian Peter Tchernyshev, partnered with Naomi Lang to win. Performing a playful tango, they swept the judging panel.

Second place went to Eva Chalom and Mathew Gates, an Englishman. Another Russian, Oleg Fediukov, teamed with Debbie Koegel for third.

"What we really wanted to find is a partner we can skate with," said Chalom, whose partner skated despite a bout with pneumonia. "I don't think any one of us had it mind to find someone from overseas ... that's just the way it ended up."

THE TOP TWO COUPLES QUALIFIED for the world championships at Helsinki, but they are long shots for a high finish.

The best American ice dancers of the 1990s, Elizabeth Punsalan and Jerod Swallow, turned pro last year. They won five U.S. crowns, but never managed to climb higher than sixth at worlds.

"As the years come, the American teams will develop," Lang said. "We just have to give it time."

Lang and Tchernyshev were training partners with Punsalan and Swallow at the Detroit Skating Club. The winners first teamed in late 1996 after he hand-wrote a letter to her asking if she was interested in a partnership. Both had recently split with their partners.

They were fifth in the 1997 nationals and moved up to third last year. In ice dancing, where upsets almost never happen, they were next in line for the title when Punsalan-Swallow moved on and Jessica Joseph and Charles Butler -- the other U.S. duo at the Nagano Olympics -- split.