It’s All in Family Support : Speedskating: Blair says her big group of backers spurs her on to a winning effort.

If actor George Wendt were doing a skit about them for “Saturday Night Live,” he would call them “Da Blairs.”

They, instead, call themselves “The Blair Bunch,” which is more appropriate because they look, talk and act like one of those wholesome, earnest television sitcom families from a simpler time.

It was the prospect--no, to hear them tell it, the certainty--of Bonnie winning the gold medal in the 500 meters in women’s speedskating that brought them to the French Alps. Mother Eleanor, 73, came from the family home in Champaign, Ill. Sister Mary, 46, came from Colorado Springs, Colo. Sister Suzy, 43, came from Park City, Utah. Brother Rob, 36, came from Dallas. Sister Angela, 35, came from Delafield, Wis.

“I don’t have a doubt in my mind that she can possibly lose this thing,” Rob said before the race. “She’s very confident, very strong-willed. She got it right here in the guts.”

Rob is hardly lacking in that section of the anatomy. He has lived with an inoperable brain tumor for four years.

He and his sisters all brought children and cousins and nieces and nephews and friends here, so many of them that no one in the group knew the exact number. One of Bonnie’s first cousins, Kathy Murphy, who arranged the travel for most of them from her home in New York, estimated there were between 45 and 50.

“We get together for weddings, funerals and Olympics,” she said.

Dressed in purple jackets that identified them as fans of Bonnie Blair, they brought signs and placed them on the fence in front of the stands on the backstretch. They were hardly elaborate. One read: “Dear Aunt Bonnie, Go Fast, Love Brittany.” But they were effective.

Aunt Bonnie went faster than anyone else, becoming the first U.S. woman to win gold medals in consecutive Winter Olympics. She also won the 500 four years ago at Calgary.

“They’ve been planning on this trip for more than a year, even last year when I wasn’t skating as well,” said Blair, 27. “I knew right then and there that if I didn’t get ready for this year, I’d be letting them down. Having their support is very special to me.”

But, apparently, to know Bonnie is to support her.

“Did you ever know anybody who, when you first meet them, you feel like you’ve know them forever?” asked a family friend, Tom Nash, of Hoffman Estates, Ill. “That’s Bonnie. That’s the Blairs, all of them.”

For Ruth Kent, Bonnie literally is the girl next door. Bonnie often stays with her sister, Angela, in Delafield while training in Milwaukee, and Kent lives next to them.

“I’ll call Bonnie up, and she’ll come over and take my son to get his haircut if I’m busy,” Kent said. “That’s just the kind of person she is. She hasn’t been soured by all the publicity. She’s untouched.”

“Yeah,” Nash said, “she’s normal.”

“No,” Kent said, “I think a normal person would let all this go to her head.”