INSIDE CHANCE : Thometz, Slowed by Illness, Has a Shot, Technically

There probably is no such thing as a good time to get sick. Still, some times might be a little more convenient than others.

Nick Thometz knows about that. He could have gotten sick a year ago and had all this time to recuperate.

Then, too, he could have gotten sick just this week, and missed the entire business here.

Instead, the speed skating sprinter from suburban Minneapolis is here to compete in the Winter Olympics, just as planned. But a blood problem that hospitalized him in December might already have cost him a medal.

If his showing last weekend during the World Sprint Championships in Milwaukee is an indication, Thometz won’t be a factor here in either the men’s 500-meter event Sunday or the 1,000 a week from Thursday. He finished fourth in the 500 last weekend, ninth in the 1,000 and ninth in the overall standings.

In 1987, he won World Cup titles in those events and was second overall in the World Sprint Championships.

“It’s the wrong year,” Thometz, 24, said here Tuesday. “But there isn’t anything I can do about it.”

Actually, Thometz was sick last summer, too, and when a case of the flu laid him low again in December, doctors ran a blood test and found he had an alarmingly low platelet count in his blood. That, and the medication he needed to combat the rare condition, left him a considerably weaker Nick Thometz than he wanted to be going into the Olympics.

“I lost a lot of power and strength,” he said, not to mention the fine edge on his conditioning.

So, short of strength and explosiveness, and maybe blood platelets as well--he still has no idea what caused the problem, or how he can avoid its recurrence--Thometz will go into Olympic competition hoping for the best. Should he also expect the worst?

“Actually, I feel all right,” he said. “Last weekend was not good, and I’m not at the spot I wanted to be in at this time, but I feel confident. This can be a good rink for me.”

If Thometz has anything going for him these days, it might well be the rink. The Olympic Oval here is indoors, safe from the elements. That makes it a very fast track, and fast tracks usually reward technical skaters and penalize power skaters, who tend to skate too hard through the turns. If a skater is going to bobble, or fall, it is likely to be in a turn.

Thometz is a technical skater. He, along with the rest of the U.S. team, spent much of the fall here, getting to know the track, learning to skate it.

“It’s a beautiful track,” said Thometz, who is 5 feet 9 inches and weighs 165 pounds. “It should be an advantage to me because I’m not as big as a lot of the others. Here, it’s more technique than strength. And the corners are tighter and that helps me, too, being smaller. It’s easier for me to get through the turns than some of the bigger, more powerful skaters.

“It’s nice not to have to deal with the elements, too. You can skate real fast and have a lot of fun.”

As much as Thometz rationalizes about technique vs. power, though, he is not predicting great things.

“Since I was sick, I haven’t felt that 100% strength,” he said. “And when you’re not as strong as you’re used to being, you can’t do things the way you usually do, or want to. It throws your timing off.

“I can feel it coming back, though. When things are going good, when you’re skating well, you head’s good, too. You’re confident. That’s where I’m getting now again.”

Time is short now, though, and no less an authority than Eric Heiden, who won five speed skating gold medals--as many as there are to be won--at Lake Placid in 1980, suggested that Thometz was not a good bet for medals.

“It’s of primary importance to come into the Olympics with a lot of confidence,” he said.

Still, he left the door open a bit.

“For Nick, maybe skating in Milwaukee was a disadvantage to him, because he was feeling weak. Here, he’s at an advantage because he’s a very good technical skater, and his technique may pull him through.”

We shall see soon enough. In any event, Thometz isn’t going to take any chances on getting sick again in the next few days, even to the extent that he will probably skip the opening ceremonies here Saturday, the day before the 500-meter race.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea to stand out in the cold for two or three hours,” he said.

After all, the day before skating for an Olympic medal may be the very worst time to get sick.