‘94 WINTER OLYMPICS / Lillehammer : NOTEBOOK : For the Americans, Games Have Been a Record Success

The Lillehammer Games have been the most successful for U.S. Winter athletes. Through Saturday, Americans had won 13 medals, six of them gold.

Previous high for the U.S. was 12, a total they won in 1932 at Lake Placid, then matched there in 1980. Previous high in foreign countries for the United States was 11 medals, in Oslo in 1952 and two years ago at Albertville, France.

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Dan Jansen, the speedskater who finally won a medal--gold, it turned out--in his last Olympic race, after having come up empty in three previous Olympics and in his first race here, on what it would be like if speedskating, like figure skating, were judged:

“Who knows? If our sport were judged, I might have won an Olympic medal before this.”

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Bonnie Blair, Jansen’s speedskating teammate who began her Olympic career 10 years ago in Sarajevo, said she would be donating $5,000 toward relief efforts in that war-torn city.

“I have a lot of great memories of the Olympics there, and it’s so different now from what I remember,” she said.

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Ray Frager in the Baltimore Sun: “CBS Friday night presented the story of the most reprehensible behavior at the Games, and it had nothing to do with figure skating.

“The mother of Uzbekistan’s Lina Cherjazova, gold medalist in the women’s freestyle skiing aerials, died three weeks ago. Her country’s Olympic committee kept the news from Cherjazova, CBS said.

“How did she find out? When she called home after Thursday’s victory.”