For U.S. Athletes, Nagano Is No Longer a Distant Gold

With fewer than 100 days remaining before opening ceremonies at the Nagano Winter Olympics--98 days to go is the official count as of this morning-- an update on Team USA’s prospects for February 1998:

ALPINE SKIING

The names haven’t changed, only the physical well-being of the American downhill stars of 1994, Tommy Moe and Picabo Street.

Moe, who won the men’s downhill gold medal and super-giant slalom silver medal at Lillehammer, Norway, tore knee ligaments in March 1995, severed a thumb tendon on broken glass while tending bar in early 1997 and missed the World Championships in Sestriere, Italy, last February. By the end of the 1996-97 season, however, he was back to his customary position among American skiers--winning the downhill and super-G in the U.S. Championships in March.

Street’s comeback from December knee surgery has been more problematic. The 1994 Olympic women’s downhill silver medalist bailed out of a September training camp in Chile when intense pain in her knee left her crumpled and crying in the snow.

After more than a month of weight conditioning in Vail, Colo., Street pronounced herself this week to be 93%.

“In Chile, I was only 82%,” she said.

Her goals on joining the 1997-98 World Cup tour later this month?

“At the beginning, top 15. By January, be in the top five.”

Also trying comebacks: Kyle Rasmussen, 11th in the men’s downhill at Lillehammer, from knee surgery, and AJ Kitt, downhill bronze medalist at the 1993 World Championships, from a recent loss of form described by one U.S. ski official as having “dropped off the face of the earth.”

Locally, Matt Grosjean of Aliso Viejo is coming off a career-best World Cup season in which he placed fourth, seventh and ninth in slalom events.

BIATHLON

Decathlon, pentathlon, triathlon--Americans know the language.

Biathlon?

Sorry. It’s Scandinavian to us.

The United States has never won a medal in this hybrid of cross-country skiing and rifle target practice, a streak that should remain intact in 1998. The current top U.S. biathlete, Ntala Skinner of Sun Valley, Idaho, was 74th in the women’s 15-kilometer event at the 1997 World Championships.

BOBSLED

Coming off an impressive gold- and silver-medal haul at a pre-Olympic competition in Nagano last winter, U.S. push-athlete Chip Minton--a professional wrestler in his spare time--brazenly predicts, “To be quite honest, I think we’re going to start off the year kicking European . . . , Japanese style.”

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We’ve heard this before from the American bobsledders, who talked the talk for two weeks at Lillehammer, then limped to the eventual finish no higher than 13th.

Driver Brian Shimer--last seen in ’94 getting disqualified from the four-man event for using a sled with runners that were too warm--finished third in the 1996-97 World Cup two-man standings and won bronze medals at the ’97 world championships in both two-man, with Rob Olesen, and four-man, with Minton, Olesen and Randy Jones.

Shimer and mates will be bidding for the first U.S. Olympic medal in bobsled since 1956.

CURLING

Often referred to as Canadians-on-the-ice- sweeping-frantically, curling makes its Olympic medal debut in Nagano. The United States has its pockets of curling expertise in Minnesota and Wisconsin, and hopes for a top-three finish in both the men’s and women’s events. At the 1997 world championships, both American teams placed sixth.

FIGURE SKATING

As women’s ice feuds go, Tara-Michelle just doesn’t have the ring, or the sting, of Tonya-Nancy. But come late February, the Tara Lipinski-Michelle Kwan rivalry should produce something Tonya Harding-Nancy Kerrigan never did.

An Olympic gold medal.

Kwan and Lipinski have split the last two women’s world championships--Kwan winning in ‘96, Lipinski edging Kwan in ‘97--and there isn’t another serious challenger within earshot.

Nervous jitters and pratfalls by Kwan at the U.S. nationals last February opened the door for Lipinski, but a more poised Kwan opened the 1997-98 season last weekend with a new program and a decisive victory over Lipinski at Skate America--on Lipinski’s home ice in Detroit.

Todd Eldredge, the 1996 men’s world champion, seems likely to win a medal in Nagano as well, although longtime nemesis Elvis Stojko of Canada is the gold-medal favorite. Stojko and Eldredge finished 1-2 at the 1997 World Championships in a clash of styles that couldn’t have been more dissimilar--Stojko all brawny, bounding across the ice; Eldredge favoring grace and finesse over acrobatics and daring.

Eldredge won the men’s title at Skate America despite a badly strained right shoulder suffered in a warmup fall.

“Obviously, I’m concerned about it,” he said last week. He hopes to return to competition in time for the Trophy Lalique in Paris on Nov. 13-16.

Two-time Olympians Jenni Meno and Todd Sand lost their long-standing title as top U.S. skating pair to Kyoko Ina and Jason Dungjen in 1997, a regression that prompted the married couple to dump Irina Rodnina as coach, pull out of Lake Arrowhead and return to the full-time tutelage of John Nicks in Costa Mesa. Meno and Sand were fifth in the 1994 Olympics.

FREESTYLE SKIING

Americans won two silver medals at the 1997 World Championships in Nagano last February--Donna Weinbrecht in women’s moguls and Eric Bergoust in men’s aerials, five weeks after breaking his right collarbone in six places during a training spill.

Weinbrecht, 32, is a five-time World Cup champion and 1992 Olympic gold medalist trying to rebound from a disappointing seventh-place finish at Lillehammer. Bergoust, 28, also was seventh at Lillehammer.

Other top U.S. freestylers include Nikki Stone, who was 10th in women’s aerials at the World Championships, and Jonny Moseley, the men’s 1996 overall World Cup champion.

ICE HOCKEY

Do you believe in miracles?

You’ll be seeing one for sure on the ice in Nagano, with hockey teams from the United States, Canada, Russia, Finland, Sweden and the Czech Republic stocked with NHL all-stars banging and slashing for the gold medal.

Persuading the lords of puckdom to halt the NHL season for 16 days and release their top players to the Olympics may stand as Gary Bettman’s greatest achievement as NHL commissioner. The big-picture result, in the words of David Ogrean, executive director of USA Hockey, should be “some of the best hockey ever played.”

The core of the 1996 World Cup championship squad should return for the United States--goaltender Mike Richter, defensemen Brian Leetch and Chris Chelios, forwards Brett Hull, John LeClair, and Mike Modano.

Women’s ice hockey debuts as a medal sport in Nagano, with the United States and Canada early co-favorites. The U.S. women lost to Canada in overtime in the final of the 1997 World Championships but won last weekend’s exhibition rematch in Salt Lake City, 5-4, in a shootout.

U.S. players include center Cammi Granato, sister of San Jose Shark forward Tony Granato, and goaltender Erin Whitten, the first woman to record a victory in professional hockey with her 6-5 triumph for Toledo of the East Coast Hockey League in 1993.

LUGE

U.S. lugers are finally talking about winning at the next Olympics. Medal-less in the sport since its Olympic debut in 1964, Americans have reasonable top-three chances in both men’s singles and doubles in ’98.

Wendel Suckow, the 1993 singles world champion, won the gold medal at the pre-Olympic World Cup test run in Nagano in February, earning the sobriquet “Bullet Man” from the Japanese media.

Chris Thorpe and Gordy Sheer, fifth at Lillehammer in men’s doubles, were runners-up at both the 1995 and 1996 World Championships and won the overall World Cup title in 1996-97.

Cammy Myler, fifth in women’s singles at Lillehammer, and Duncan Kennedy, 10th in men’s singles at the 1997 World Championships, are other medal possibilities.

NORDIC SKIING

Americans will be listed in the “also skied” column of this Olympic discipline, which includes cross-country racing and ski jumping.

Nina Kemppel, the top individual U.S. cross-country skier in ‘94--27th in the women’s 30-kilometer classical--placed 34th in the 15-kilometer freestyle at the 1997 World Championships. The top U.S. man at the World Championships, Justin Wadsworth, finished 24th in men’s 30-kilometer freestyle.

In ski jumping, the United States observed the 70th anniversary of its last Olympic medal, in 1924, by finishing no higher than 33rd at Lillehammer. Four years later, the outlook remains the same. The current U.S. champion is Casey Colby of Lake Placid, N.Y.

In Nordic combined--cross-country and jumping in one event--the top U.S. competitors are Todd Lodwick, who became the first American in 12 seasons to win a World Cup event when he placed first in the 1996-97 tour opener in his hometown of Steamboat Springs, Colo., and Tim Tetreault, who finished third in a World Cup event in Lahti, Finland.

SNOWBOARDING

This sport is otherwise known as where the X Games and the Olympic movement finally cross paths.

Bidding for the first Olympic gold medals in this rather undisciplined discipline are Mike Jacoby and Sondra Van Ert in giant slalom and Todd Richards in halfpipe, which has been described as skateboarding on frozen H2O.

Jacoby, 28, is a two-time silver medalist in the World Championships.

Van Ert, 33, is the defending women’s world champion in giant slalom.

SPEEDSKATING

The Nagano Olympics will be the first since 1980 without either Bonnie Blair or Dan Jansen competing for the United States, so, yes, you can consider this a rebuilding year for the American speedskating team.

The next Bonnie Blair?

Chris Witty, 21, of West Allis, Wis., already has been so designated, based on her nine medals during the 1996-97 World Cup season and third-place overall finish at the world sprint championships in February.

The next Dianne Holum?

That could be Holum’s 17-year old daughter, Kirstin, who is following in the ice shavings of her mother, a four-time Olympic speedskating medalist. Kirstin set the junior women’s 1,500-meter world record and placed ninth at 3,000 meters at the World Championships.

Casey and KC are the main story lines on the men’s side on the long track. Casey FitzRandolph broke the American record for 1,000 meters last January with a mark of 1:11.75--faster than Jansen’s gold medal-winning time at Lillehammer. KC Boutiette holds the American record for 1,500 meters, 1:50.09, and placed fourth overall at the World Championships.

In short track, two-time gold medalist Cathy Turner has unretired an unprecedented third time at 35, which puts her two comebacks ahead of Eric Flaim, 30. Winner of silver medals in both long- and short-track skating, he also quit the sport after winning his second silver medal in 1994, then came back last March with an 11th-place showing at the U.S. championships.

A promising new talent is 18-year-old Rusty Smith of Sunset Beach, who won the silver at the 1997 world junior championships.

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Calendar

CHAMPIONS SERIES OF FIGURE SKATING

* Wednesday-Nov. 9: Skate Canada (Halifax, Nova Scotia).

* Nov. 13-16: Trophy Lalique (Paris).

* Nov. 19-23: Cup of Russia (St. Petersburg).

* Nov. 26-30: NHK Trophy (Nagano, Japan).

ALPINE SKIING WORLD CUP

* Nov. 21-24: Men’s and women’s slalom and giant slalom (Park City, Utah).

* Nov. 27-29: Women’s super-G, parallel racing (Mammoth Mountain).

* Nov. 29-30: Men’s super-G and downhill (Whistler Mountain, Canada).

CROSS-COUNTRY SKIING WORLD CUP

* Nov. 22-23: Men’s 10K and relay, women’s 5K and relay (Beitostolen, Norway).

LUGE WORLD CUP

* Nov. 22-23 at Sigulda, Latvia.

* Nov. 29-20 at Konigssee, Germany.

SPEEDSKATING WORLD CUP

* Nov. 15-16: 500- and 1,000-meter events (Roseville, Minn.)

* Nov. 22-23: 500- and 1,000-meter events (Calgary, Canada).