Of Ice and Men

In 1988, the Jamaican bobsled team was a sensation at the Calgary Winter Games. It wasn’t that the Jamaicans were good--they weren’t--it was just that they were there. Bobsledders from a Caribbean country? How droll.

Dudley Stokes and his hobbin’ and a’bobbin’ Jamaican buddies are here as well, and considerably better than they were 10 years ago, but the stage is no longer theirs alone in the theater of the absurd.

What would you think, for instance, of a couple of cross-country skiers from Kenya? Can you see them poling across the veldt?

How about a luger from India? A guy on a sled in the teeming streets of Calcutta?

That’s one of the things about the Olympics, the Winter Games in particular. You not only see things you’ve never seen before, you see things you’ve never dreamed of seeing.

There were, indeed, a couple of cross-country skiers from Kenya here, Philip Boit and Henry Bitok. They were here because Rudy Chapa, vice president of a widely known athletic shoe company in Beaverton, Ore., wondered, “Kenyans are such good runners. Why can’t they become great cross-country skiers?”

Chapa posed his question to Jaakko Tuominen, a former runner from Finland, who passed it on to some of his country’s cross-country skiers. Eventually, Boit, whose cousin is Mike Boit, a former 800-meter world-record holder, and Bitok were in Pajulahti, Finland, about 100 miles north of Helsinki, gazing upon snow and saying, “Pretty cold up here, isn’t it?”

They competed four times last season in Finnish national races, with mixed results, and didn’t do much here. Boit finished 92nd, last, in the men’s 10K classical race--at least he finished, some others didn’t--and got a hug from winner Bjorn Daehlie of Norway. Bitok was here as an observer and didn’t compete. But they were here. And the intriguing question remains, “Kenyans are such good runners. Why can’t they become great cross-country skiers?”

As for Shiva Keshavan, the Indian luger? He, in fact, is a bit of a ringer. But only a bit. He grew up in northern India, in the Himalayas, and certainly is no stranger to winter. He was, however, a stranger to luge racing when the International Luge Federation showed up near his hometown with a tryout camp. Keshavan thought sliding down an ice trough looked like fun, tried it and was one of two men selected to go to a training camp in Austria.

“The other guy, unfortunately, had a bad crash and quit after that,” Keshavan said. “I was the only one who carried on to this Olympics.”

Like the Kenyans, he had no real shot in his event and finished 28th. But again, he was here.

Also here, for you comic strip lovers, was Andy Kapp, the skip of the German curling team. Wonder what Flo thought of that.