OLYMPIC HOPEFUL SKATER ENJOYS THRILL OF PERFORMING; SKATER'S STUNT WORK APPEARS IN FEATURE FILM NOW IN RELEASE

If figure skater Colin Vander Veen ever makes it to the Olympics, the eye of the nation's audience won't be a stranger.

But Olympic hopeful Vander Veen will likely be a stranger to that audience, unless he's recognized from some television commercials he's done.

Vander Veen said he appears in the recently released movie: "The Cutting Edge" that is his stunt work does.

The skater, who lives in the Atlanta suburb of Marietta but trains in Toronto, is in Cape Girardeau for "Beach Party on Ice" at Plaza Galleria. The event featured shows Friday and Saturday nights.

The final show will be held today at 2 p.m. Admission is $2.

Coincidentally the movie is about a working class ex-hockey player and a spoiled rich figure skater who team up to try to win the Olympic gold. Romance, of course, figures in.

The movie is directed by Paul Michael Glaser, who formerly acted in the television series Starsky and Hutch.

In the movie, Vander Veen said he doubles for actor D.B. Sweeney, performing a "couple of falls and some jumps" and "a lot of the feetwork where they show the skates up close." Sweeney stars in the movie as Doug, opposite Moira Kelly as Kate.

"Most of the stuff I do is when they began training, when he first gets on the figure skates," said Vander Veen, 22. "That's where they did most of the falls."

Dressed in an aqua shirt sporting a United States Olympic Training Center logo, Vander Veen spoke with a self-assured air.

"I was not the only stunt man. There were probably five or six stunt men under D.B. Sweeney. I was just one of the many," he added.

The "tug" scene, when the two characters begin training is him, Vander Veen said. He described the scene as "intense."

How he came to be picked as one of the skaters in the movie was through Robin Cousins, a skating coach he knows who was the film's skating coordinator. Cousins also won a gold medal for Great Britain in figure skating in the 1980 Olympics.

"It's just my luck he chose me," he said. "I was a pretty good double."

The skater said he is striving for a spot on the 1994 Olympic team that will go to Norway. Starting in 1994 the winter and summer Olympics will be held opposite each other every two years.

Vander Veen's repertoire consists of a triple axel and a quadruple toe loop, which reportedly only a handful of skaters can perform. On Saturday afternoon, while Vander Veen skated for a photographer at The Ice, both children and adults at a skating session stopped to watch the skater perform twirls, jumps and other feats.

"The Cutting Edge" is Vander Veen's first movie, but he's also done some recent commercials. Just last week, he said, he did a Canadian commercial for Ultra Wheels in-line skates.

Seeing a movie being made from the other side is very enlightening, said Vander Veen.

"It's a very hard job. It's a great profession. I really gained a lot of respect for those people."

Vander Veen said he was on the movie set at least 10 days. Some days, he said, he would be involved in shooting for 10 hours. Other days, the actual shooting only took 30 minutes.

"Even if you do (the scene) perfect, they take five shots," he said. But if an angle isn't right, though, a stunt can be done 15 times.

Vander Veen has gotten to meet Sweeney and knows him, he said.

"I went out with Moira - not date-wise. We went out a couple of times, hit the town of Tornoto," he added.

After the movie, he said he got an agent. But in spite of his movie and commercial experience, Vander Veen said his main goal is skating.

"I'm not pursuing an actor career. I'm acting to pay for the career I'm already pursuing, which is skating."

Vander Veen said he began skating when he was 6 years old to try to build up his legs for running. His mother, a track coach at a high school in Marietta, thought he'd be a track star, he said.

The Ice's manager and skating school director, Ellis "Tim" Phillips, Jr., got Vander Veen to take part in the skating event. Phillips said he and Vander Veen had the same skating coach at one time.

"When I called him to do this thing I didn't even know he had been in the movie," he said. "He told me at the airport."

"The Cutting Edge" is currently showing at the Town Plaza Cinema.