U.S. Prospects and Where to Look for Gold at Nagano

Getting properly prepped for the 1998 Winter Olympics, a 10-step program. . . .

1.) First things first: How many American gold medals are we talking about?

If the freestyle skiers hold up their end, the United States will eclipse its record for gold medals won at a Winter Olympics, which is six.

Ticking them off now, so you’ll know which events to videotape:

1. Michelle Kwan in women’s figure skating. If she doesn’t win, Tara Lipinski will.

2. Chris Witty in women’s 1,000-meter speedskating. She broke the world record in this event late last year and is the reigning 1998 world champion.

3. Sondra Van Ert in women’s snowboard giant slalom. She won the 1997 world title in this event.

4. Women’s hockey. Both Olympic hockey tournaments figure to produce U.S.-Canada finals, but Patrick Roy and Canada’s incentive to purge the humiliation of the 1996 World Cup should be the difference in the men’s gold-medal game. The U.S. women, having scored a significant victory over the Canadians in December’s Three Nations Cup, will make sure USA Hockey leaves Japan with no less than a split.

5, 6 and 7. Freestyle skiers Eric Bergoust (men’s aerials), Jonny Moseley (men’s moguls) and Nikki Stone (women’s aerials). All three lead the current World Cup standings in their respective specialties.

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2.) Will Americans sweep the women’s figure skating medals? It’s a nice story line, but in a word: no.

A U.S. sweep would require Nicole Bobek’s joining Kwan and Lipinski on the podium. Bobek is capable--she upset Kwan for the U.S. title in 1995, she won a bronze medal at the world championships the same year and at last month’s nationals in Philadelphia, Bobek was second to Kwan after the short program.

But the politics of international figure skating judging are not likely to allow it. No country has swept the women’s figure skating medals at a Winter Olympics, and there has been only one such sweep at the world championships, a competition that made its debut in 1906. That occurred in 1991, when Americans Kristi Yamaguchi, Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan placed 1-2-3 in Munich.

“Whenever you have a panel of judges that are all from different countries, and somebody skates really, really well, it is difficult to get three Americans in there,” says Kwan’s coach, Frank Carroll. “Because [the judges] do want to hold up their own.

“When you have a majority of European judges, they would like to see a European on that podium, if they can. So nothing is ever a shoo-in, that’s for sure.”

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3.) Who will be the breakout stars of these Games?

Austrian Alpine skier Hermann Maier, the revelation of this 1997-98 World Cup season, is a gold-medal threat in no fewer than four events--downhill (his specialty), super-giant slalom, giant slalom and combined. Maier’s skills awe even his Austrian “Wonder Team” mates. After placing second to Maier in the super-G at Schladming, Austria, Andreas Schifferer joked, “I’m the best skier from this planet.”

Germany has two potential multiple gold-medal winners in Alpine skier Katja Seizinger and speedskater Gunda Niemann. Seizinger, the 1997-98 women’s overall World Cup points leader, is favored in both speed events--downhill and super-G--and could win a third gold in combined. Niemann was a force at the 1997 long track world championships, winning at 1,500, 3,000 and 5,000 meters and placing second at 500 meters.

Russian cross-country skier Elena Valbe, already in possession of six Olympic medals, begins these Games having completed an unprecedented gold-medal sweep of all five women’s events at the 1997 world championships.

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4.) Is there a “sleeper” sport in these Winter Olympics?

Actually, there is a new sport on the Olympic program in which many contestants appear to be nodding off. . . . Oh, sorry, this column has been officially designated a Curling Joke-Free Zone.

Snowboarding is getting a lot of pre-Olympic play as the beach volleyball of these Games; CBS suspects it will be such a big hit with the kids that the network has enlisted MTV veejay Kennedy as an on-site commentator.

Or to put it another way: These shredders and knuckledraggers are going to be carving it, so crank up some Prodigy and Blink 182, throw down some Surge, get amped, and get ready to catch some radical big air.

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5.) How is Picabo Street’s knee?

Strong enough to climb back up on the medals podium, it appears.

In September, she was crying on a frozen slope in Chile, despondent that recovery from knee surgery was dragging on so painfully slowly. But by January’s end, she was placing fourth at Cortina, Italy, and winning training runs in Sweden.

Another top-three finish in this Olympic women’s downhill would be no surprise.

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6.) What’s the outlook for the U.S. men’s ski team?

How do you say bleak in Japanese?

Tommy Moe won downhill gold and super-G silver in 1994, but hasn’t had a top-five finish in any World Cup event since 1995. He is currently mired in 37th place in men’s World Cup downhill standings, 76th overall.

Other American World Cup rankings in men’s downhill: Kyle Rasmussen, 34th; AJ Kitt, 40th; Jason Rosener, 42nd; Chad Fleischer, 50th. Matt Grosjean, the United States’ top male slalom skier at No. 32 in the world, is 61st in the overall standings.

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7.) Can Todd Eldredge win the men’s figure skating competition without a quad?

There are two schools of thought on Eldredge at these Olympics:

a) He skates so conservatively, he’s skating for a bronze medal at best.

b) He skates so conservatively, he’ll be the only contender to stay on his feet, enabling him to step over the fallen bodies of Elvis Stojko, Ilia Kulik and Alexei Yagudin to pick up his gold medal.

If Canada’s Stojko, the defending world champion, and Russia’s Kulik hit all their jumps, including their quads, Eldredge will be battling Yagudin for third unless he too braves the Quad Challenge. But the Olympics are the most nerve-racking of all figure skating competitions, where the steadiest of leapers often wind up sprawled on the ice. In 1994, favorites Brian Boitano, Viktor Petrenko and Kurt Browning all imploded in the short program, clearing the path for 20-year-old Alexei Urmanov to win the gold.

The consensus is that it will take a cleanly landed quadruple jump to win the men’s gold medal this time. Advantage, Stojko. Eldredge’s best gold-medal chance, it appears, would be to draw the last skating assignment in the long program and pray for falling Russians and Canadians.

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8.) What is the sound of one skate clapping?

It’s the new noise in speedskating, courtesy of a controversial Dutch innovation known as the clapskate.

The clapskate mechanism--U.S. speedskater Chris Witty calls it “this machine”--involves a spring-loaded blade that detaches from the heel, enabling a skater to better push off the ice with his or her toe.

Many veteran skaters and coaches hate the clapskate, decrying it as a victory of technology over skill, but it has been nothing less than a wonder tool for many Dutch, German and Japanese skaters who have catapulted from obscurity to medal contention in the last year.

The Americans haven’t adapted so quickly; Bonnie Blair, among others, proposed banning the clapskate from these Olympics to give skaters more time to acclimate. But the clapskates are in for Nagano--marking not the first time Japan has been ahead of the United States on the technological curve.

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9.) How long will Raisa Smetanina’s Winter Olympic record of 10 medals last?

Until Feb. 12, when Norwegian cross-country skiing legend Bjorn Daehlie wins his second medal of the Nagano Games, lifting his all-time total to 11.

Daehlie won four medals--two gold--in Lillehammer to boost his Olympic total to nine, one fewer than former Soviet cross-country ski star Smetanina. Daehlie is expected to win four more medals in 1998, which would raise the all-time individual Olympic record to 13.

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10.) Will the “Dream Team” men’s hockey tournament be a success?

From a competition standpoint, there is no doubt. NHL stars now representing the United States, Canada, Russia, Finland and Sweden are predicting the greatest hockey tournament ever. For once, it’s safe to believe the hype.

But with every U.S. game slotted for CBS’ post-Letterman late-night show, the TV ratings impact will be muted. CBS had a choice of what ice capade to feature in prime time and--upset of all upsets--the scarred broken noses lost out to the fresh-faced pixies.

Hard-core hockey fans may be willing to sacrifice sleep for Lindros vs. LeClair, or feed the living-room VCR its nightly tape, but millions of potential converts will be in bed, dreaming of Lipinski’s long program.

Any “Dream Team”-inspired U.S. hockey boom is likely to be delayed until 2002, when Salt Lake City hosts and the NHL can get a decent time slot.