Speedskating relay maneuvers by J.R. Celski and Apolo Ohno assured Team USA of Winter Games fameBy McClatchy-Tribune News Service
February 28, 2010, 3:20PM
Ivan Sekretarev, Associated PressTeam USA's (left to right) J.R. Celski, Simon Cho, Jordan Malone and Apolo Ohno after winning the bronze medal for the men's 5000-meter speedskating relay.By Craig HillMcClatchy Newspapers
The News Tribune (Tacoma, Wash.)
www.cleveland.com/olympics/index.ssf/2010/02/speedskating_relay_maneuvers_b.htmlVancouver, British Columbia – Even after the American flag was hoisted and the bronze medal dangled around his neck,
J.R. Celski didn’t realize the full significance of his push.
He knew he’d pushed his hero and fellow Federal Way short-track speedskater
Apolo Ohno from fourth to third on the final exchange of the 5,000-meter relay.
What he didn’t know was that he’d also shoved the United States to top of the Winter Olympics record book.
Fittingly for the first Olympics staged in the Northwest, the maneuver by two athletes from the region assured that the United States would at least tie Germany’s 2002 record for most medals won by a country at a Winter Olympics with 36.
A smile spread across Celski’s face when he heard the news.
“I had no idea,” Celski said. “When our team leader finds out, we’re going to be jumping up and down.”
The medal for the Federal Way skaters set the stage for the U.S. bobsled team to lock down the 37th medal Saturday when it won gold.
The only drama left is determining what color the U.S. men’s hockey team medal will be. The Americans, who locked up a medal with a win Friday, play Canada in the gold medal game this afternoon at 12:15.
“It’s a great time to be an American,” said short-track speedskater
Katherine ReutterBut the Vancouver Games will be remembered for much more than America’s dominance.
Like every Olympics, the games were packed with stories – some sad, some happy and some that were just plain funny. Here are some destined to be a part of this games’ legacy.
THE DEADLY TRACK
When Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili was killed in training run the morning before the opening ceremonies, the safety and limited training time on the Whistler Sliding Centre became the biggest story of the games.
The International Luge Federation blamed Kumaritashvili’s death on a driver error even though they immediately erected a wall to keep sliders from flying off the track.
“Driver error caused the crash,” said Argentine luger Ruben Gonzalez, who trained with the Georgian slider, “but not having the wall there caused the death.”
ROCHETTE SKATES FOR MOM
Perhaps the most memorable moment of the games was the performance by Canadian figure skater Joannie Rochette.
Two days after the her mom, Therese, died, Rochette skated one of the best performances of her life. She burst into tears when she finished as the crowd showered her with flowers and plush toys.
Two nights later she locked up the bronze medal.
“It’s been a lifetime project with my mom, and we achieved that,” Rochette said.
OHNO’S LEGEND GROWS
For three nights, Ohno added to his legendary career with dramatic passes and uncanny luck. But on what might have been the final night of his Olympic career, the 27-year-old from Federal Way appeared to run out of good fortune.
Ohno touched a Canadian skater while trying to defend his gold medal in the 500-meter final. The skater fell and Ohno thought he won silver. However, an official, who Ohno pointed out was Canadian, disqualified Ohno.
Still, Ohno, who has hinted that these are his final Olympics, ended the games in dramatic fashion. In the 45-lap team relay he got a push from Celski on the final exchange to pass the Chinese team and win bronze.
He now has eight career medals – two gold, two silver and four bronze – setting a record for U.S. Winter Olympians. Long-track speedskater Bonnie Blair held the old record with six medals.
“For me this has been my best Olympic games,” Ohno said.
MISERABLE WEATHER
Organizers who assured fans that the weather would be nothing to worry about were proved wrong.
Alpine skiing events were delayed on four occasions, leaving many fans unable to use tickets that in some cases cost more than $200.
A lack of snow at Mount Cypress, the venue for freestyle and snowboard events, forced organizers to ship in snow from other locations, including Mount Baker.
The biggest beneficiary of the poor weather may have been the U.S. Nordic combined team.
When wind and snow picked up after the ski jump portion of their event, many of the top competitors had jumped in much worse conditions. In the end, American Bill Demong won gold, the first in any Nordic event for the U.S., and Johnny Spillane won his third silver.
Even Demong said the conditions were unfair.
VONN’S BODY
Perhaps no terrain got more coverage during the Olympics than skier Lindsey Vonn’s body.
First it was her ski racer glam shot on the cover of Sports Illustrated’s Olympics preview edition, then it was her photo spread in the magazine’s famous swimsuit edition.
But once the games started, attention switched to her right shin, which she injured so seriously during training that she could barely walk.
Still, Vonn competed in all five races, winning gold and bronze medals. A fall less than 100 yards from the finish cost her a third medal in the super combined.
“My shin still hurts, but I’m happy to be a double medalist,” Vonn said. “Not many people can say that.”
ALPINE DOMINANCE
The U.S. ski team won eight medals at the Olympics, more than any other American team. The team also broke its medals record set at the 1984 Olympics.
“It was the Lindsey Vonn Show coming in,” U.S. skier Marco Sullivan said. “Now it’s the U.S. Ski Team Show.”
The dominance was led by Bode Miller, who failed to win any medal in ’06, but won one of every color on Whistler.
But it wasn’t just Vonn and Miller who shone. There were surprises too.
Andrew Weibrecht, who had never finished better than 10th in a World Cup race, won bronze in the super combined. And after three years of struggling to ski well, Julia Mancuso surprised the field by winning two silver medals to go along with her gold from 2006.
OTHER HISTORY MAKERS
At times it seemed as if Olympic history was made every day.
• Clara Hughes, a 38-year-old Canadian, became the first person to win multiple bronze medals in both the summer and winter games. She won two bronze in cycling in 1996 and now has gold, silver and two bronze in speed skating.
• The United States entered the games with only two Nordic skiing medals in its history. The team won four, all in Nordic combined, at these games. Demong won the first U.S. Nordic skiing gold.
• Steven Holcomb, who was saved from going blind less than three years ago by an experimental surgery, piloted the U.S. four-man bobsled to the country’s first men’s bobsled gold medal in 62 years.
ODDBALL STORIES
It wouldn’t be the Olympics without a few oddball stories.
• Hubertus Von Hohenlohe, a German prince with Mexican ancestry, competed in Alpine skiing for Mexico. At 51, he competed against athletes as young as 16. He finished fourth-to-last in the giant slalom.
• Argentina’s Ruben “Speedy” Gonzalez finished last in luge. But at 47 he didn’t mind. “I achieved my dream,” he said. “… I want (people) to think, if this guy can go to four Olympics then I can do anything.”
• Kwame Nkrumah-Acheampong became the first Winter Olympian from the African nation of Ghana. The 35-year-old finished 47th in Saturday’s slalom.
THE EXCUSES
Some of the best excuses for losing:
• The Netherlands four-man bobsled pulled out of the Olympics when its pilot, Edwin van Calken, said he lost confidence in his ability to safely navigate the course. His coach, Tom de La Hunty, called him a chicken.
• When figure skater Evgeni Plushenko lost gold to American Evan Lysacek, the Russian was furious Lysacek didn’t try a quadruple jump. Plushenko told Russian television reporters, “You can’t be considered a true men’s champion without a quad.”
• The full quote from Norwegian cross-country skier Odd-Bjoern Hjelmeset explaining his performance in a team relay will never be fully printed in this newspaper, but it’s legendary among journalists who covered the games. Here’s the heavily abridged, PG-13 version: “I think I have seen too much porn the last 14 days.”
CANADA’S RESURGENCE
The games couldn’t have started much worse for the Canadians.
Hours after the luge death, the Olympic cauldron malfunctioned during the opening ceremonies. Adding to the fiasco, Canadian athletes weren’t performing well in spite of a $110 million athlete training program called “Own the Podium.”
But the games seemed to change for Canada in the second week as the host country started racking up medals, including more gold ones, 13 so far, than any other country.
With 11 fewer medals than the United States they hardly owned the podium, but in a country so crazed about hockey that the sport is depicted on the back of their $5 bill, if they beat the Americans today all will be forgiven.
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Team USA has set new national mark for Winter Games medals; slated to set new world standardBy Plain Dealer wire services
February 28, 2010, 2:55PM
Kevin Frayer, Associated PressTeam USA's (left to right) Trevor Marsicano, Jonathan Kuck, Chad Hedrick and Brian Hansen after winning the silver medal in the men's team pursuit speed skating race.By Philip Hersh
Chicago Tribune
Vancouver, British Columbia — When speedskaters Brian Hansen, Jonathan Kuck and Chad Hedrick finished the team pursuit final early Saturday afternoon, they could pat themselves on the back for winning a silver medal and officially start the U.S. chest-thumping for making history.
Theirs was the 35th medal for Team USA in the 2010 Winter Olympics, one more than the U.S. record 34 at Salt Lake City in 2002. Steve Holcomb's four-man bobsled team added another later Saturday, first U.S. gold in the sport since 1948.
"As an athlete, with everyone focusing on the medal count, you obviously pay attention," said Apolo Anton Ohno, the four-time Olympian whose three short-track speedskating medals here gave him a career eight, most for a U.S. winter athlete. "To know this is the biggest medal haul ever is pretty amazing."The United States will top the medal count for the first time since 1932, and it will finish with 37 medals, breaking the single-country record of 36 set by Germany in 2002. Canada also has made history, leading the gold-medal count for the first time.
Even the International Olympic Committee is celebrating the U.S. success, which also is amazing given the fractious IOC relations with the United States in the past decade.
"If the U.S. comes first by whatever count, they will claim a victory, and that would be good for them and the Olympic movement," IOC president Jacques Rogge said.
As noteworthy as the U.S. achievement is in its simplest mathematical terms, it is even more impressive when a number of other factors are added to this Olympic differential equation.
And the results prove how far the United States has come since its dismal showing, with just six medals, the last time the Winter Games took place in Canada, thanks to what became a two-phase plan to improve U.S. performance.
Phase one was the equivalent of putting a brace on a badly injured knee. Phase two was reconstructive surgery and rehabilitation.
From winning a worst-ever 4.3 percent of the available medals at the 1988 Calgary Olympics, the U.S. has won 14.2 percent of the Vancouver medals with just five remaining for Sunday's competition.
That defuses any argument that the U.S. medal total is inflated by the number of new events since 1988. So does this: 17 U.S. medals have come in events also on the Calgary program. And only one medal has come in an event added since 2002.
"Thus says our athletes were well-prepared, and we had a fantastic games," said Scott Blackmun, the U.S. Olympic Committee's chief chief executive.
That preparation began even before the U.S. team had left Calgary with merely two gold, one bronze and three silver medals, all in figure skating and speedskating.
The 1988 Winter Games still had five days to run when New York Yankees' owner George Steinbrenner, then a USOC board member, blustered into town to head up a commission that changed the USOC's previously vague mission into one that made medals the bottom line.
The 1989 Steinbrenner Commission report would start phase one of an athlete performance plan that began with short-term support and long-term ideas: more money in the year before an Olympics and health insurance, part-time jobs and tuition grants that would allow athletes to compete longer.
Within four years, the U.S. had upped its medal-winning percentage by 150 percent, then improved a bit more at the 1994 Lillehammer, Norway, Olympics before backsliding slightly at Nagano, Japan, in 1998.
Billy Demong competed at his first of four Olympics in Nagano, finishing 34th in the Nordic combined individual event. Last week, he became the first U.S. gold medalist in the sport.
"In Nagano, we felt like a small country." Demong said. "As a whole team, we felt like one of the outsiders. And now we're here to win."
Olympic kayak champion Norm Bellingham, the USOC's chief operating officer, has been involved in the development programs since 1988. He said a desire to have a "respectable medal total" at the Salt Lake City Games led to a change in philosophy that is a major factor in the Vancouver results.
"I don't think anyone ever perceived one-year programs would be sufficient," Bellingham said. "They needed to be 7- or 10-year programs, because the time it takes for an athlete identified as podium potential to reach the podium typically is 8-to-10 years."
Demong, who will carry the U.S. flag in the Closing Ceremony, and his sport are the prime examples, benefitting from increased USOC funding and the long-term plan the U.S. Ski & Snowboard Association was asked to develop in the mid-90s for Nordic combined.
"The way we got to where we are is by taking it every step of the way," Demong said. "We kind of earned it before we got here."
The USOC gave $40 million in winter athlete support over the four years leading to Salt Lake City, including $18 million designated just to help win 2002 medals. The support was $55 million in the four years leading to Vancouver.
That will be a challenge for the USOC after 2012, given the recession and questions over how much money it will get from as-yet undetermined U.S. television rights for 2014 and 2016.
"The USOC has a saying: ‘It's not every four years, it's every day,' " Ohno said. "I'd like to think that future generations, Sochi (host of 2014 Winter Olympics in Russia) and beyond, will receive whatever they need to be their absolute best at the games."The bar for absolute best now is very high
), and Ter Mors was DQ’d for the pass on Vicent/Park. Park advanced in 1st, Vicent in 2nd.
But anything can happen in a relay, and 'anything' did. 
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