Feb. 24 | 4:30 p.m. ET
I know I wouldn’t talk about He Who Must Not Be Named again, but this is a little different. The Games are almost over, and it’s past the time when all we do is talk about what people didn’t do. It’s time to appreciate the final moments that could produce some wonder and delight.
Let’s face it, that ski bum guy who’s name has dominated the headlines for all the wrong reasons has one last race to run — Saturday’s men’s slalom — and it’s worth watching. As much as Bode Miller — there, I said it — has been the poster child for everything that’s been wrong with the U.S. performance, he can still do something for the team, for the medal count, for his sport and for what’s left of his reputation.
Ted Ligety, a slalom specialist who won gold in the combined, also is in the race, and if either he or Miller should medal in the race, either could give the United States its third Alpine medal.
That doesn’t sound like a lot considering the high expectations for the team, with Miller, last year’s World Cup champ, leading the men and Lindsey Kildow the women. But Miller has had trouble finding his mojo and Kildow crashed while training for the downhill and incurred a seriously bruised glute that ended her chances of skiing at her best.
Still, Ligety won the combined and Friday, Julia Mancuso surprised everyone by winning the women’s super-G. That gives the team two gold medals, which equals the medal total the team had in 2002, when both medals were silver and both came courtesy of Miller.
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Taking to the ice
That’s up in Sestriere. Back in Turin, there’s one more feel-good ending that can yet be written when Apolo Anton Ohno skates his last individual race, the men’s 500, in short track speedskating.
Ohno has a bronze in the 1,000 and a fall and DNF in the 1,500. His Korean rivals have all the glory.
No one has accused Ohno of being a bust. It was well known coming in that the Koreans are the kings of the short track. But he’s never been the superhero he was supposed to be four years ago in Salt Lake City, when he won a gold and silver.
The Koreans are going for a sweep of the men’s events. If Ohno can deny them one medal, it will be as big as anything he’s done in his sport — and he’s done a lot.
And now, for something entirely different
Finally, something that has nothing to do with sports, but could mean a lot in a few years for video games. I found it while browsing the Daily Grail, and had to pass it on.
It’s a demo of a new multi-touch computer screen that’s completely interactive. Play the demo, then start wishing you had one. It’s literally awesome.
Feb. 23 | 2:30 p.m. ET
It hasn’t been a very good fortnight for the Gretzky brand. The Great One arrived in Turin to find every sportswriter in the world waiting for him to find out more about the gambling ring his wife, Janet Jones, and assistant coach on the Coyotes, Rick Tocchet, were allegedly involved with.
Gretzky’s always been a gentleman, but on this occasion, he threw his wife under the bus, saying he had nothing to do with it. After Tocchet was given a leave of absence, Gretzky got off another protestation of non-involvement and pronounced the issue closed.
He was, after all, in town as the executive director of Team Canada, and the business of the moment was to defend the hockey-mad nation’s 2002 Olympic gold medal.
Gretzky had been the director of that 2002 squad, but the team he brought to Turin was questioned as soon as it was put together. It, like the American team, was long on experience and short on young legs and youthful zeal. Kids like Jason Spezza, Eric Staal, Sidney Crosby and Dion Phaneuf were told to stay home and get experience.
The experience they got was that of watching Team Canada go out with as little fight as Team USA. After being shut out twice in the preliminary rounds — once by Switzerland — Canada’s oldest were skated into oblivion by Russia in the quarterfinals. The score was 2-0, and Russia’s offense was generated by Alexander Ovechkin, who is vying with Crosby for the NHL’s rookie-of-the-year honors. Russia had a number of kids, and all were big contributors.
When Gretzky got to the news conference after the game, his eyes were red from crying. He said he is the one to blame for the disaster. And the Canadian media will be glad to take him up on that.
He’s still the Great One as a hockey player, but his reputation gets more battered by the day. When he comes home, it will be to resume coaching a Phoenix Coyote team that is in no immediate danger of making the playoffs.
His wife may be indicted. His own gambling habits are under scrutiny. He didn’t even play for a medal. His NHL team stinks.
Even Bode Miller’s life is better.
Feb. 22 | 7:05 p.m. ET
Compared to the Summer Games, the Winter Olympics is a minor event, with not nearly the number of sports, athletes, nations and spectators. But the Winter Games do have one thing the Summer Games don’t — men and women competing together.
Sneer at ice dancing and couples figure skating if you must. But no matter what you think of the activities as sport, you can’t deny that they draw major ratings and provide some of the best stories of the games.
For my money, the best 30 seconds of the Olympics was when the Italian ice dancers, Barbara Fusar Poli and Maurizio Margaglio, crashed at the end of one of their routines. Falling down is part of ice skating, and when it happens the skaters get up and continue what they were doing, trying to act as if nothing happened — or, at worst, that they meant to perform that move on their backsides.
Not Poli and Margaglio. She got up and stood stock still, glaring daggers, red-hot pokers, javelins, lances, spears and the missing Iraqi arsenal of WMDs at her partner. He drew himself up to his full imperious height, didn’t move a muscle and glared an equal inventory of death and destruction back at her. The crowd was both dumbstruck and enthralled that such a delicious domestic drama was being played out before their eyes.
One night later, they were back, and after their performance it was all hugs and kisses for the couple and melted hearts for the audience.
You don’t get that in the Summer Games, and more’s the pity. It almost makes you wish the IOC would go ahead and admit ballroom dancing — "dance sport" to those who practice it — to the games. Okay, so it’s more sequins and make-up and weeping men and baleful judges, but it sure is entertaining.
Or, if we can’t get dancing, how about a mixed pairs event in gymnastics? We’ve seen how the males in pairs skating toss their partners around. Imagine what a male gymnast and an 80-pound female could do on a tumbling mat. Imagine the fallout if he dropped her.
On the track, why not a 4x100-meter relay with two men and two women on each team? That would actually be a legitimate event. We know which country has the fastest men and which has the fastest women, but which has the fastest of both?
You could do the same thing in swimming with any or all of the relays. If you really want to find out which nation is the best, what better way to do it?
I doubt the IOC would do it, but they should if for no other reason than that it would be fun to watch. Isn’t that reason enough?
Feb. 21 | 6:45 p.m. ET
There’s only one thing lacking in the Olympic hockey tournament — first-round excitement.
The final games of the qualifying rounds were played Tuesday, and although there was some excellent hockey in many of them, including the United States’ 5-4 loss to Russia, there wasn’t any drama. It was like that throughout the round. The big teams got through to the quarters, even if they didn’t play particularly well.
That’s because Olympic hockey is very much like the NHL — just about everybody makes the playoffs. In the NHL, 16 of 30 teams get in; in the Olympics, it’s eight of 12. Unless you’re very, very bad, you’re moving on.
For the United States, that was a good thing. Though the team won just one game in the qualification round, it got into the quarterfinals with no trouble. Canada lost two straight shutouts and also breezed in.
Sure, standings in the qualifiers determine who you play when the games really count, but the teams in this tournament are so evenly matched, even that really doesn’t matter. Besides, if you want to win the gold, sooner or later, you have to play the best teams anyway.
It’s tempting to say the Olympics should just ditch the qualifying rounds and instead have the top eight teams in the world just come in and play it off. If you want to add games, make each round best two-out-of-three. The maximum number of games any team could play under that format would be nine; now the medalists will play eight each.
That would make the games mean more, but it wouldn’t necessarily make a better tournament. That’s because most of the squads arrived in Turin and were playing the next day, with linemates introducing themselves to each other on the fly.
Teams need the qualifying round to establish consistency and familiarity, and the five relatively meaningless games do that. Finally, the eight survivors are starting to look like teams and not collections of individuals.
The Canadians, who had been shut out in two straight, rebounded to beat the Czech Republic, scoring three goals in five minutes and showing they’re ready for the drive for a gold. And even though Team USA lost to Russia, it found its scoring touch with four goals. It also got to rest its No. 1 goalie, Rick DiPietro, and give back-up Robert Esche some work. It, too, is ready.
The real tournament begins Wednesday, and it promises to be excellent. There are eight teams, and, based on its qualifying round games, even Switzerland could end up in the gold-medal game.
Team USA plays Finland, Russia plays Canada, Switzerland plays Sweden and the old Czechoslovakia finds itself together again as the Czech Republic plays Slovakia. You can look at those games and say Finland should beat the United States and Sweden should take care of Switzerland, but you wouldn’t be shocked if either game went the other way. The other two games are pick-ems — even Canada-Russia.
The next three games are like the NCAA tournament — you either win and advance or lose and play for pride. There isn’t a bad game in that line-up, and there won’t be a bad game from now until the gold-medal game Sunday, the final day of the Olympics.
You can’t ask for anything better than that.
Feb. 20 | 3:55 p.m. ET
I don’t wish I hadn’t ever heard of Bode Miller. His run to skiing’s World Cup last year was a great story, and the anticipation of what he could do in the Olympics enticing. But I do wish I never hear of him again, at least until he wins something.
My favorite story Monday — and not just because it’s the one I covered — was the U.S. women’s hockey team coming back from a crushing semifinal loss to rescue their self-respect and add a medal, even if it was just bronze, to their country’s total. It was about the Olympic spirit, about overcoming disappointment, about taking pride in the effort and teamwork that allowed them to win something that’s not without value.
And, yet, the biggest story of the day was Bode failing to medal in the giant slalom.
It shouldn’t be a big deal anymore. He’s told us often enough medals aren’t important, and he’s demonstrated that drinking beer and having fun is. It’s four races and four no-medal finishes. Did we actually expect something different? Is this actually news?
I guess it is.
On Sunday, I did a morning hit on MSNBC TV with Alex Witt, who’s a pretty terrific journalist and host. Among the questions she had for me was one about Miller.
I knew it was coming (Hint for prospective guests on TV shows: Always know the questions beforehand. It saves you from looking as empty-headed as you actually are, or at least it does in my case.) so when Alex lobbed it to me from the home office in Secaucus, N.J., I was ready.
I said I didn’t care anymore about Miller. If he didn’t care enough to prepare to do his best at the Olympics, why should I care enough to watch him? Yes, he can still win a medal —
he has that much talent. But until he actually does, I don’t want to know about it.
There are so many good individual stories here. Not one of them is good enough to carry the flag through the 17-day parade of competitions, but they’re good stories nonetheless. And Bode is pushing all of them aside.
On the first Sunday of the Games, when Bode faded at the bottom of the hill and missed the podium in the downhill, Shaun White and Danny Kass were going one-two in the snowboard halfpipe. I’d have loved to watch the boarders, who have brought a big dose of fresh air and young blood into the Olympics, but Bode was the story.
Then there was the combined, and it was more of the same —
bus to Sestriere, ignore better stories, watch Bode miss a gate.
Today, it’s the women’s hockey and the ice dancing with Americans ready to take a medal for the first time in more than a quarter century, but the story is Bode missing again —
although he did actually finish both runs of the GS, which is progress. And then afterward, the same guy who doesn’t care about medals has the nerve to say he could have won four golds.
A great story can make the Games. A bad one can ruin them. Bode’s got one race left. He’d better get a medal. At this point, any color will do.
Feb. 19 | 2:30 p.m. ET
Performance-enhancing drugs are bad. There’s not a whole lot of disagreement on that. And the better and more vigilant the International Olympic Committee and the World Anti-Doping Administration can be in chasing down cheaters, the better it is for sports and the athletes who play them.
But there’s something disturbing about the police barging in on a team’s headquarters and raiding it in the middle of the night. That’s what the Italian police did Saturday to the Austrian biathlon and cross-country teams.
It’s a tangled story leading up to the raids, and it involves the team’s coach, Walter Mayer, who was banned until 2010 by the IOC on suspicion of having transfused Austrian athletes with their own blood in 2002 in Salt Lake City. WADA heard that Mayer was in Italy with the teams, which were staying in houses in the mountains, near their venues. And, according to Austrian newspapers, while he had spent one night with the team as a private guest, he was in Austria when the raid took place.
According to The Chicago Tribune, representatives of American and Norwegian Nordic teams had no problem with the raids, which took place the night before a cross-country relay. The Austrians, normally good in the sport, finished last, with team members complaining that they were unable to sleep after having 15 police burst into their house and being taken away for drug tests.
There are ways, it seems to conduct tests, and it’s hard to see how this advances the cause. Police took a lot of items out of the team houses, but didn’t say they’d found anything suspicious, only that they would test whatever it was they took.
We don’t need armed police and midnight raids, especially the night before a competition. If the team is innocent, its chances of performing well are ruined. If it’s guilty, there’s got to be another way to catch them. And if it requires entering a house at night, why can’t doping officials, who regularly make out-of-competition visits to athletes for samples, do the entering?
Why are police needed to roust athletes out of their beds, stand them against the wall, then haul them away for more testing? Can’t WADA officials simply get the samples on site and take a look around?
As much as I abhor cheaters, I don’t think it’s good when the police get involved in enforcing the rules of competition. In this case, if they turn up nothing, they will have deprived a country of a chance to perform at their best. And if something does turn up, couldn’t it have been found in a more civilized way?
"White night"
Saturday night was “Notte Bianco” — the “white night” — here in Turin. What it meant was that the center of the city stayed open until dawn and what seemed like every person in town came out to swarm the avenues and piazzas and pack the trendy clubs that line the banks of the Po River.
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Mike Celizic A night club across the Po River from Turin's city center added brilliant color to the city's "white night." |
Museums opened their doors and didn’t charge admissions. Churches likewise remained open and drew crowds of tourists and even some who stopped to pray. Bars were packed to beyond bursting.
I wondered what it would be like if an American city tried the same thing. Imagine visiting the Met or the Guggenheim at midnight. Or the top of the Empire State Building at 3 a.m.
It could be a disaster. It could also be a whole lot of fun.
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