‘94 WINTER OLYMPICS / LILLEHAMMER : Back Home, They Can Only Listen and Wait : Reaction: Supporters of Kerrigan and Harding take the news from Norway with chins up.

In Portland, Ore., the Olympic figure skating competition competed on radio talk shows with listeners seemingly more angered over the Trail Blazers’ inability to trade for Danny Manning than over the failure of Tonya Harding to live up to her Olympic boast of a gold medal.

At the Clackamas Town Center in Portland, where a Tonya Harding sign hangs over her home rink, the noontime crowd of skaters--most of them youngsters--appeared largely oblivious to the fact that Harding was performing at that very moment thousands of miles away.

There were few radios among the shoppers who gathered around the ice rink to watch the skaters.

One of the few people monitoring the figure skating results was Judi Galusha, 38, of nearby Milaukie, Ore., who spun around the ice with her two children while listening to her radio with headphones.

When she heard that Oksana Baiul of Ukraine had won the competition, she smiled. “I was hoping that somebody else would win, and not Nancy (Kerrigan) or Tonya,” she said. “I thought there was too much attention placed on them, so I wasn’t rooting for either one of them.”

Barbara McKeever, 40, of Sandy, Ore., had rushed to the rink to hear the results and was pleased when she learned that the Ukrainian had won the gold although she said she had been hoping for a Kerrigan victory.

“I thought there was too much controversy made over Kerrigan and Harding at the Olympics. It would have been nice for Nancy to win, but I think the outcome was great,” McKeever said.

But 11-year-old Nicole Green wore a pink button on her T-shirt saying “We believe in Tonya” as she skated at the Clackamas rink. When she learned that her hometown favorite had failed to win a medal, she was clearly downcast and said she and her friends had watched Harding practice for the Olympics.

“I still think she’s wonderful,” she said.

Among those who did not seem outwardly concerned about the goings-on in Lillehammer was a vendor whose cart featured small “Tonya Going for Gold” prints--at $6 and $12 each--near the ice rink.

Who was she rooting for in the final program? “I don’t want to say,” she said. “I don’t want to offend any customers.”