‘94 WINTER OLYMPICS / LILLEHAMMER : It’s Same Gold Story for Blair : Speedskating: She says there’s nothing routine about it after winning 500 for third time.

After the emotional gold-medal ceremony for speedskater Dan Jansen 24 hours earlier, Bonnie Blair’s victory Saturday might have seemed routine. After all, it was the fourth one for her in the last three Olympics, the third in a row in the same event, the 500 meters.

Although she later got a congratulatory call from President Clinton, who said, “You’re really making us look good over there,” even her raucous fans from around the world were muted, humming a ho-hum version of her theme song, “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean.”

But it obviously was not routine for Blair as she stood on the highest level of the podium, tears welling in her eyes, and sang along as the national anthem was played.

“It’s never routine, let me tell you,” she said later. “Once you think it’s routine, that’s when it’s going to be taken away from you quicker than you can think. It was very special to be up there, seeing my family in the stands and hearing the national anthem.”

In winning, Blair, 29, carved a piece of history out of the fast track inside the Olympic Hall. Not only has no other speedskater ever won at the same distance in three consecutive Olympics, only one other athlete, Norwegian figure skater Sonja Henie, has ever won the same individual event in three consecutive Winter Games. She won the women’s gold medal in 1928, ’32 and ’36.

Blair also tied diver Pat McCormick, track sprinter Evelyn Ashford and swimmer Janet Evans as the U.S. women Olympians with the most gold medals, four, and she will move into a class by herself if she retains her 1,000-meter title Wednesday. She also will skate in the 1,500 meters Monday and is considered a medal contender.

“I really didn’t think about the history part of it until the whole thing was over with,” Blair said. “If you think about a medal or this record or that, you lose perspective of what you’re out to accomplish.”

Asked what she thought when the 500 was over, she said, “I haven’t had too much time to think about it.”

Although Blair has been winning consistently on the World Cup circuit this season, she was not the overwhelming favorite. South Korea’s Yoo Sun-Hee set the track record of 39.65 in a December race in which she beat Blair.

Skating in the third pair, Blair bested that time with her 39.25, but it was apparent from her subdued reaction that she was not comfortable. Franziska Schenk, a 19-year-old German, had beaten her previous personal record by more than seven-tenths of a second with her 39.70 in the previous group, and Blair took that as an indication that the track was even faster than usual.

As it turned out, Schenk simply had had a very good day, good enough to win the bronze medal. The only woman to come within four-tenths of a second of Blair was Canadian silver-medalist Susan Auch, who finished in 39.61.

When South Korea’s Yoo was clocked in 39.92, good enough only for fifth place, Blair finally allowed her coach, Nick Thometz, to congratulate her with a hug.

Not much later, she was in the bleachers, celebrating with the 60 relatives and friends who had traveled from the United States to see her compete. They wore matching gold baseball caps and sweatshirts that said, “Go, Bonnie, Gold.”

Blair, who is from Champaign, Ill., said “Da Blairs” had given her considerable support in the last two Olympics, in 1988 in Calgary, Canada, and in 1992 in Albertville, France, but they almost skipped this trip because of the high prices in Norway. They changed their minds after families here responded to a newspaper article about the predicament by offering inexpensive lodging in their homes.

Besides them, her biggest fan among the capacity crowd of 12,000 was Jansen, who has been one of her best friends since their days in junior competition.

In the Olympic Hall to see Jansen skate last Monday in a race he was favored to win, the 500 meters, Blair left in tears when he slipped on a curve and finished eighth. Finding that experience “nerve-racking,” Blair watched on television in the athletes’ village when he won the 1,000 Friday.

But when it came time for her to race Saturday, she found herself thinking more about his slip, and the fall that took 3,000-meter favorite Gunda Niemann of Germany out of that race last week, than she did about Jansen’s victory.

“Favorites can lose,” Blair said. “This is the Olympics, and it comes down to that day. You never know what’s going to happen. I just told myself to relax and skate like I do any other time. In all my other races, I try to act like they’re in the Olympics so it won’t feel any different when I get here.”

Is this her last Olympics?

She has consistently said that it will be, repeating Saturday that she plans to retire after next winter’s world sprint championships in Milwaukee.

“My time can’t go on and on and on and on,” said Blair, who competed in her first Winter Games in 1984. “I’ve got to put a stop to it at some point and get on with the rest of my life.”

But she talked so much during her post-race news conference about how much she loves the sport that she was pressed on her impending retirement until she decided she would at least consider continuing beyond 1995.

“Don’t tell my family,” she said. “They’ll kill me.”

*

* MIKE DOWNEY

Kristen Talbot finishes 20th, but she doesn’t feel bad about it. She is still recovering from donating bone marrow to her brother. C3