April 20, 2000 3:06 PM Reuters

NEWARK, Delaware, April 20 (Reuters) - There is new hope that two-time Russian world ice dance champion Anjelika Krylova may skate again despite her announcement earlier this month she had to retire due to a chronic back injury.

"Everybody is saying she is stopping skating. This is not true for right now. Now we have a different situation," her partner, Oleg Ovsiannikov, told Reuters on Thursday in a telephone interview from his home in Delaware.

"She is doing something with a new doctor in Moscow. He is trying to help her right now. I am waiting for more information," said the 1998 Olympic silver medalist who gets daily updates from Krylova.

Ovsiannikov, 30, said he hoped to have a definite answer about their skating future in May. In the meantime, he is working as a coach at their Delaware training site.

Krylova's injury kept the couple off the ice all of last season and prevented them from defending their world title in Nice last month.

In their absence, French skaters Marina Anissina and Gwendal Peizerat took the ice dance crown and, for the first time in 32 years, Russia was shut out of the medals.

Krylova, 26, who skated in pain the last two years, had said in an interview posted on a figure skating Web site this week that she was retiring on the advice of doctors who warned her the injury could worsen if she continued to train.

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