Olympic Gold Ends Up Iced by Big Blue

CBS announcers called the end of Sunday’s gold-medal hockey game between Canada and Sweden “the most exciting moment in Olympic history,” but instead of seeing the heroics in Lillehammer, Norway, viewers in Lexington, Ky., got their own version of the “Heidi Bowl.”

WKYT-TV, the CBS affiliate in Lexington, cut short its broadcast at about 12:30 p.m.--moments before Sweden wrapped up the gold.

With the score 2-2 after 70 minutes, each team was given five penalty shots in a shootout. Each scored on two of them, sending the game into a sudden-death shootout.

That’s when WKYT cut away to 2 1/2 minutes of commercials and then the start of the “Rick Pitino Show,” starring the Kentucky basketball coach.

After WKYT went to the commercial, Sweden won the gold medal on the second shot of sudden death.

Add Heidi Bowl: The incident was reminiscent of the infamous “Heidi Bowl” on Nov. 17, 1968. NBC outraged football fans by cutting away from the final minutes of a New York Jet-Oakland Raider game to begin airing “Heidi” on schedule. Viewers missed seeing the Raiders come from behind to beat the Jets, 43-32.

Trivia time: As Wayne Gretzky closes in on Gordie Howe’s NHL record of 801 goals, which goalkeeper has given up the most goals to the Kings’ captain?

Summer games: Leander Paes, who is expected to lead India against the United States in a first-round Davis Cup match March 25-27 at New Delhi, was conceived in Munich during the 1972 Olympics.

His father played on India’s bronze medal-winning field hockey team, his mother on its women’s basketball team.

“I don’t know what happened,” Paes told Tennis magazine. “They were supposed to be concentrating on sport.”

Hollywood talk: The Orlando Magic’s Shaquille O’Neal and Anfernee Hardaway recently made their big-screen acting debuts in the movie “Blue Chips.”

Newsday film critic Jack Mathews said: “Shaquille O’Neal doesn’t fool anybody. You know you’re watching a jock read his lines, but he’s perfectly pleasant company, and Hardaway . . . holds his own in a couple of dramatic scenes with (Nick) Nolte.”

Golden Bear: California’s Jason Kidd has people everywhere talking about his remarkable court game, but columnist Ray Ratto of the San Francisco Examiner may have put it best:

“He flogs the game until it meets his specifications.”

Trivia answer: Richard Brodeur, 29, in nine seasons with the New York Islanders, Vancouver Canucks and Hartford Whalers.

Quotebook: Former NFL coach-turned-race car owner Joe Gibbs, on the death of stock car driver Neil Bonnett: “Life is a constant weighing of the rewards and the risks. Here’s a guy who had been out of the car, counted the costs and got back into one. To take the safe path, for a lot of us, is not quality life.”