Wintry Wonder Land

Casting a wary eye at the Nagano Winter Olympics, which will end one year from today, the speaker somberly assessed:

“If it continues like this, I think the Nagano Games will not be successful.”

And the speaker was?

(a) The president of the Japanese Olympic Committee, inspecting the preparations firsthand.

(b) Billy Payne, thinking wishfully.

(c) An unnamed CBS Sports executive, contemplating the network’s $375-million investment in the 1998 Games, two falls on the ice last weekend by Michelle Kwan and no American male skier placing higher than 16th in the recent World Championships.

(d) An unnamed U.S. Olympic Committee official, handicapping Team USA’s gold-medal chances next February.

The words actually were delivered by Hironoshin Furuhashi, head of Japan’s Olympic organizing committee, but (c) and (d) wouldn’t be bad guesses, considering recent events on snow and ice.

Early reports from the 1998 Winter Olympic site have journalists running to the translation guide, just to make sure “Nagano” isn’t Japanese for “Atlanta.” The story line, at this point, sounds ominously familiar: hopeless traffic snarls, runaway price-gouging, insufficient lodging, unimpressive venues, broken promises, logistic migraines, an indifferent local population.

Already, Nagano officials are working hard to lessen expectations. After taking the torch from Lillehammer in 1994, the Japanese promised a “model” Olympics four years hence. Today, Makoto Kobayashi, director general of the Nagano Organizing Committee (NAOC), only guarantees a “simple, satisfactory Games.”

Problems include:

--Bloated operational expenses, now estimated at $800 million, and counting, up from a projected $644 million.

--Far-flung, difficult-to-reach venues. The downhill ski course is 30 mountainous miles from Nagano, the biathlon venue 40 miles out of town.

--The downhill ski run is too short.

--Not enough seating at the ice hockey and figure skating arenas.

--Not enough enthusiasm by the local residents.

--And a widely chronicled scandal involving speedskaters and insects that eventually prompted a public apology from a vice president of the NAOC.

Yes, it’s different in Japan. Goro Yoshimura, governor and vice president chairman of the NAOC, recently made the mistake of dismissing speedskating as “uninteresting”--likening it to “water beetles on a whirligig.”

Japanese speedskaters and speedskating officials were disgraced. Virulent protest erupted and Yoshimura, displaying shrewd political skill, quelled the controversy by claiming to have watched nearly 40 more speedskating races and had changed his mind.

The water beetle, Yoshimura proclaimed, is an “admirable” insect.

On the other side of the Pacific, pre-Olympic concerns are less seismic, but they are concerns, nonetheless.

If Nagano is having trouble getting ready for February ‘98, so too is the probable U.S. roster for those Winter Games.

Last week at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Nashville, two leading hopes for Olympic gold medals failed to retain their national titles and a third, reigning world champion Todd Eldredge, skated a conservative program to strategically hold off a more adventurous challenger, Michael Weiss, for first place.

Kwan, the current women’s world champion, fell twice--almost three times--in the first two minutes of her long program and relinquished her U.S. title to 14-year-old Tara Lipinski.

Likewise, the two-time world bronze-medal pairs team of Jenni Meno and Todd Sand unraveled in the short program and watched longtime rivals Kyoka Ina and Jason Dungjen climb instead to the top of the victory podium.

At the same time in Sestriere, Italy, a Tommy Moe-less U.S. men’s Alpine ski team wiped out in the World Championships, placing no higher than 16th in any event. The U.S. women, also without injured MVP Picabo Street, managed one medal--Hilary Lindh’s stunning gold in the downhill.

That was the good news for the U.S. ski team.

The bad news: Lindh, 27, is contemplating retirement before the Nagano Games.

Is there a ’98 gold medal in the house?

The United States upset Canada to win last year’s ice hockey World Cup, but the Canadians were without Mario Lemieux, Ray Bourque and Paul Kariya. Add them to a Dream Team lineup of Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier, Eric Lindros, Steve Yzerman, Brendan Shanahan, Paul Coffey and Pierre Turgeon, and “O Canada” becomes the odds-on anthem of choice for the Nagano hockey medals ceremony.

Speedskating? Bonnie Blair and Dan Jansen have retired. Of the 1994 Olympic holdovers, Christine Witty finished 23rd in Norway (women’s 1,000 meters) and K.C. Boutiette placed 39th (men’s 1,500 meters), which possibly provided the incentive for ’94 short-track gold medalist Cathy Turner to come out of retirement at 34.

Bobsled? Brian Shimer and Robert Olesen led the American two-man and four-man sleds to bronze medals in last month’s World Championships, but Germany and Switzerland continue to dominate this event.

Biathlon? Not our sport. Wait for the triathlon in 2000 in Sydney.

Luge is another traditional American oil slick. The United States’ best finish in an Olympic luge competition? Fourth place, in doubles, by Mark Grimmette and Jon Edwards, in 1994.

Grimmette and Edwards no longer compete as a team.

In one-man luge, two Americans have placed as high as fifth, most recently Wendell Suckow in 1994. Last week on the Olympic luge track in Nagano, Suckow upset 1992 and 1994 gold medalist Georg Hackl of Germany to win the World Cup final, but that was a one-day race, requiring two runs. At the Olympics, it will be a demanding two-day, four-run endurance test.

“That’s a significant difference,” says Sandy Caligiore of the U.S. Luge Assn. “You have two good runs the first day and you have to learn that’s not good enough. You take the lead, sleep on it and have to bring it to the track the next day.”

Three new events--curling, snowboarding and women’s ice hockey--will debut at Nagano. Curling seems to have been added merely to pad Canada’s gold-medal haul--the Canadians dominate the men’s and women’s divisions. The United States is still trying to qualify for one of the eight berths in each division; they currently rank fifth in men’s and fourth in women’s.

Snowboarding, the Xtreme Games’ great gift to the Olympic movement, and its Gen-X cousin, freestyle skiing, could be where Americans make their biggest mark in Nagano.

Snowboarders Sondra Van Ert and Mike Jacoby are reigning world gold and silver medalists in women’s and men’s giant slalom. And at the recent World Freestyle Skiing Championships, two Americans--Donna Weinbrecht (women’s moguls) and Eric Bergoust (men’s aerials)--placed second.

But for those who prefer their gold in Alpine skiing and skating, there are only questions 11 1/2 months before Nagano.

--Can Moe and Street recover from hand and knee injuries to duplicate their successes in Lillehammer?

Moe, the ’94 gold medalist in men’s downhill, sliced tendons in his hand on a broken glass while tending bar. Street, ’94 silver medalist in women’s downhill, tore a knee ligament in December. Both, U.S. ski officials hope, could return to competition by late spring.

--Can Kwan regain her confidence, and her footing, before next month’s world title defense in Lausanne, Switzerland?

A week ago, Kwan, 16 and already a world champion, appeared to be the one U.S. lock on a Nagano gold medal. Then, during her final skate at the U.S. championships in Nashville, she looked like nothing so much as another nervous teenager, falling twice and stumbling once en route to a disappointing silver medal.

Suddenly, Kwan is perceived as vulnerable and beatable. And waiting for her in Lausanne will be 1995 world champion Chen Lu of China, 1996 and 1997 European champion Irina Slutskaya of Russia and the two Americans who outskated her in last Saturday’s long program, Lipinski and Nicole Bobek.

--Can Eldredge increase the difficulty and daring in his play-it-safe routine and step up to the challenge presented by the three returning medalists from Lillehammer--Russia’s Alexei Urmanov, Canada’s Elvis Stojko and France’s Philippe Candeloro?

All three skate with more power and bravado than Eldredge, and so, last weekend, did countryman Weiss, who tried--and barely failed to cleanly land--a quadruple jump, unprecedented among U.S. skaters. But not among European skaters.

--Was the 1996 hockey World Cup a fluke, or can the Americans bring back Olympic gold 18 years after the “Miracle on Ice”?

It would not be a miracle this time--not with Brett Hull, Brian Leetch, John LeClair, Mike Modano, Chris Chelios, Jeremy Roenick, Mike Richter and Tony Amonte on the U.S. roster.

But the Canadians will have Gretzky, Lindros and Messier; the Russians will have Alexander Mogilny, Pavel Bure and Sergei Fedorov; and the Czechs will have Jaromir Jagr and Dominik Hasek. On the hockey rink in Nagano, it will be Dream Teams all around--and may the best multimillionaires win.

In the meantime, U.S. Winter Olympic aficionados are best advised to hope, pray . . . and keep an eye on those snowboarders.