Salt Lake a winner among whiners

SAL RUIBAL, GANNETT NEWS SERVICE

Originally published Monday, February 25, 2002

SALT LAKE CITY -- The days of whine and roses finally are over. Bouquets of yellow roses went to every medal winner. It seemed that almost everyone else just whined.

The Canadians whined and got another gold medal in pairs figure skating. The Koreans whined, threw down their own flag and got nowhere. The Russians took complaining to Olympian heights with dramatic gestures worthy of a Chekhov play, threatening briefly to pull out of the Games and go home.

They couldn't spoil what turned out to be one of the best-organized Olympics. The buses ran on time, the skies were almost always sunny and the home team won an unprecedented number of medals -- 34, exceeding the U.S. Olympic Committee's prediction of 20.

There were unlikely heroes, such as the high-flying snowboarders who put the game back into the Winter Games. Their obvious joy got the XIX Olympiad off to an energetic start.

And moments of emotion that an army of TV commentators couldn't cheapen: Jimmy Shea's gold medal run in skeleton with an angel on his shoulder and a keepsake from his grandfather, a two-time Olympic medalist, in his helmet; 16-year-old Sarah Hughes' ecstasy after hitting her first jump in the women's figure skating final; diminutive speedskater Derek Parra standing tall on the gold medal podium, the first Mexican-American to medal at a Winter Olympics.

Determining the Games' ultimate winners and losers is more subjective than judging pairs figure skating. But here are our picks:

- Winner: Salt Lake City is a big winner. After a bidding scandal that tarred the city's reputation, severe budget crises and no small measure of self-doubt, the little city that could, did. All of the important issues -- transportation and security -- came off with nary a hitch.

And when problems did arise, the hands-on attitude of the locals saved the day. The most telling moment came when Salt Lake Organizing Committee head Mitt Romney jumped out of his official car and began directing traffic around a highway bottleneck that threatened to make everyone late to the men's downhill on the first weekend of the Games.

- Loser: Sportsmanship finished last and threatened to pull the Games down with it. The pairs skating debacle was compounded when expediency led to an end-run around the rules and the awarding of an extra set of gold medals for the aggrieved Canadian pair over the objections of the Russians, who were first on the sullied scorecards.

The French judge at the center of the controversy, Marie-Reine Le Gougne, changed her version of the fiasco several times, with the villains rotating from the Russians to the British to the Canadians.

That wound festered into a mini-Cold War, with every call against a Russian athlete deemed a blow to the former superpower's sagging self-esteem. Late Thursday, the Russians threatened to pull out, but with only three competition days left, the hissy fit fizzled as the clock ran out.

The South Koreans also stomped their feet after a call in men's short-track speedskating took a gold medal from Kim Dong-sung and gave it to Seattle's Apolo Anton Ohno. Kim slammed his country's flag to the ice when he got the bad news, and his countrymen responded by blocking the USOC's Web site with a barrage of nasty e-mail.

IOC Director-General Francois Carrard insisted the Russian and South Korean complaints were due "to the success of the Games. The stakes are so high, the aspirations so big. ... You have reaction. That is human."

The president of the U.S. Olympic Committee, Sandy Baldwin, had a different view: She described the protests as "anti-American."

The blowup is unlikely to affect U.S. chances of hosting future Games. Four U.S. cities are vying for the 2012 Summer Games.

- Winner: NBC was a winner, but with a less-than-perfect performance. Prime-time ratings beat CBS's lackluster showing in Nagano four years ago, and in today's fractured media universe, any gain is a major victory. After promising some advertisers a 17.9 prime-time average, NBC scored a 19 average, a number well behind the all-time blowout Tonya-Nancy 1994 ratings at Lillehammer.

- Winner: Extreme sports have long been dissed by mainstream purists who prefer their games to have sticks and balls. But only the most hard-line sports apparatchik could ignore the pure fun the snowboarders displayed in the halfpipe.

And the Gen X sports of snowboard and freestyle skiing delivered the goods on the medals board, racking up eight medals, including a gold medal for Kelly Clark in women's snowboard halfpipe and a medals sweep in men's halfpipe.

But with success came the fear that these "soul sports" eventually would become bloated and tainted. "I started when the sport was nothing, when it wasn't accepted on the mountains," gold medal snowboarder Ross Powers said. "People looked down on it. I've grown with it. I know what it's all about. It's not going to change me. It's not going to change for me."

- Winner: Nothing happened. That's why the massive Olympic security effort was a winner. The security blanket was far from subtle, and the initial obtrusiveness rankled those not used to pat-downs, wand-waving and bag searches. On the first competition day, it took more than an hour to clear security at the Deer Valley venue, site of the freestyle skiing competition. But that time was reduced to just a few minutes by the end of the first week.

The massive security presence -- ranging from the yellow-jacketed Olympic Police, nicknamed the "Killer Bees" for their distinct uniforms, to the M-16-toting combat-ready National Guardsmen patrolling the Olympic Village perimeter -- managed to be reassuring without becoming a constant reminder that danger has been a part of the Olympics since the dark days in Munich in 1972.

- Loser: Defending U.S. gold medalists found that repeating was tougher than winning. Alpine skier Street, freestyle artist Jonny Moseley, aerialist Eric Bergoust and the U.S. women's hockey team couldn't recapture that Nagano magic in Utah. But there's no solace like already having a gold medal under the pillow.

- Winner: This was the Olympics of new -- and diverse -- faces. Hispanics Derek Parra and Jennifer Rodriguez were in the spotlight as well as bobsledder Vonetta Flowers, the first black to win a Winter Games medal. American bobsledders Randy Jones and Garrett Hines became the first black men to get a Winter Games medal Saturday

- Winner: With eight medals and six different medalists, the U.S. long-trackers were one of the surprise teams of the Games. In a sport once limited mostly to skaters from the upper Midwest, converted in-line skaters Parra, Rodriguez and Joey Cheek broadened the talent pool a bit and accounted for five medals.

The long-track team's medal total tied the U.S. record, set in 1980, and was more than were won by the entire Chinese delegation.

And don't forget the Utah Olympic Oval, where nine world records were set in 10 events, or the Nike speedskating suits, which were worn by six of the 10 gold medalists and five of the eight world record-setters.

In short-track, the United States' Ohno probably can write his own ticket with Madison Avenue now, not only because of his dynamic presence and skating style but because of the graceful way he accepted his silver after getting knocked down in the 1,000 meters and then rallying for gold in the 1,500 despite competing with a cut leg. He didn't whine when he was disqualified Saturday in the 500 race and the U.S. relay team he anchored finished fourth.

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