COMMENTARY

By Jim Litke

updated 4:39 a.m. ET Feb. 23, 2006

Jim Litke

CESANA, Italy - The soap opera that was the U.S. women’s bobsled team finally came skidding to a halt Tuesday night. That’s when the pair who got too little attention also got the only result that mattered.

Drama is rarely conducive to winning, but that didn’t stop driver Shauna Rohbock and brakeman Valerie Fleming from riding the USA-1 sled to a silver medal behind the Germans. Their finish broke an American drought on the track that covered the luge, skeleton and bobsled squads and stretched through six events — this just four years after the same bunch collected eight medals in Salt Lake City.

And now that the sliders are finally free to talk about what really took place behind the scenes, can an Emmy be far behind?

“It’s such a relief,” U.S. team leader Terry Kent said, “to see them go out and be successful, after all the things they’ve had to put up with. I’m very excited for Val and Shauna today.”

Kent would never admit as much, but a lot of people were a lot less excited about the sixth-place finish by the odd coupling of Jean Prahm and Vonetta Flowers in USA-2. Some of those same people might even suggest the tandem that held onto the headlines until the very last moment got what they deserved. To explain exactly how much, a bit of background is in order.

Four years ago, Prahm competed at Salt Lake City under her maiden name, Racine, but just about everybody called her “Mean Jean.” On the eve of the 2002 Winter Games, Prahm unceremoniously dumped her brakeman and then-best friend, Jen Davidson, even though they had won the previous two overall World Cup championships and the hearts of blue chip advertisers ranging from General Motors to Kellogg’s.

Making matters worse, she replaced Davidson with a former NCAA heptathlon champion named Gea Johnson, who only a year earlier had finished serving a four-year track suspension for using anabolic steroids.

Then, like now, Flowers found herself sitting in the USA-2 sled, riding shotgun for driver Jill Bakken. A former track All-American at UAB, Flowers, too, got her seat at the last minute as a replacement for none other than Rohbock.

Slide show   Emotional Moments Feb. 26: See photos of athletes' highs and lows from Sunday.

As if things weren’t sticky enough, Johnson then pulled a hamstring in training, which persuaded Prahm to go behind Bakken’s back and invite Flowers to climb out of Bakken’s sled and into the back of hers. That ploy failed, and in what seemed at the time like a just reward, Bakken and Flowers won gold.

Now fast forward to November, when U.S. women’s coach Bill Tavares gathered his four sliders and asked them all to play nice.

“You can’t totally avoid drama, not with these women,” Tavares said then. “If you can figure out how, let me know.”

Tavares was right about this much: His woes were just beginning.

Rohbock had to watch the 2002 games from the sidelines — working as a forerunner in Salt Lake City — but instead of nursing a grudge, she took Tavares’ advice and switched from brakeman to driver. Rohbock took her lumps on the World Cup circuit early on, but slowly found her groove.

“We saw something special the first time I got in the sled with her and she took it from there,” he recalled Tuesday night. “She’s an incredible driver and the scary part is, she has a long future. She has a lot to learn. She’s not halfway through her potential. In my opinion, she could start ruling this whole circuit.”

Slide show   Pictures of the Day Check out Sunday's best Olympic images.

For a while, though, Tavares must have felt like he was the only one convinced of Rohbock’s talent. The pairing of Flowers and Prahm in USA-2 gave the media an almost irresistible Jekyll-and-Hyde angle, and that was the story everybody ran with — even after Rohbock drove skillfully enough in the preliminaries to set up the silver for USA-1, and Prahm made a driver’s ed-caliber mistake in turn 16 on the same day that effectively sealed the fate of USA-2.

And after the final two runs sorted all the drama out, you couldn’t help but wonder whether Fleming intended a little dig when she said, “I know I push for the best driver in the world. I have all the confidence in the world in Shauna.”

And while Prahm was as gracious as she could be afterward, you couldn’t help but wonder, too, how deep her disappointment ran.

“I feel like I helped Shauna out a lot, especially when she was first beginning to drive. So I feel like in some small way, I had a part in it. And I’m just so proud of them. They put it together.

“That,” Prahm added, in a fitting postscript, “is what the Olympics are all about.”

MORE FROM BOBSLED, LUGE, SKELETON

Bobsled, luge, skeleton Section Front

Retired Hays heading back to football Texan Hays retires after finishing 7th It was all downhill for U.S. sliding teams Celizic: America's top 10 Olympic busts Medal winners, complete results A closer look at bobsled, luge, skeleton U.S. bobsled roster U.S. luge roster U.S. skeleton roster Bobsled, luge, skeleton Section Front   Add Bobsled, luge, skeleton headlines to your news reader: