Heavy Medal Wonder Symbolizes These Games

Hello Daehlie, goodbye Nagano.

As the rest of the world packed up and wearily prepared to head home, treating killer cases of Olympic hangover with large medicinal doses of sake, Bjorn Daehlie was out on the cross-country ski course once more, mushing to yet another gold medal, his third of these Games and a record eighth of his Olympic career.

This one was the toughest, coming in the Winter Games’ version of the marathon, the men’s 50-kilometer race.

Otherwise known as Ski Till You Keel.

Supposedly, the 50K is Daehlie’s weakest event, which is a relative term, I know, when talking about the Norwegian Human Snow Plow. The 50K was the only event in which Daehlie failed to earn a medal in Lillehammer, and at 30, pushing 31, Ole Bjorn is getting up there and has to be getting a little tired with fending off all these kid Nordic trackers with the fresh legs.

Daehlie had already won three medals here--golds in the 10-kilometer classical event and the 40-kilometer team relay and nearly another at 30 kilometers, getting pipped at the post, as the Brits say, by countryman and rival Thomas Alsgaard.

That’s 50 kilometers of brutal skiing, mushing through snow and sleet and freezing rain and all the other inclement conditions that kept Daehlie’s Alpine brethren huddled around the fireplace for days on end.

With 50 more to come Sunday morning.

Daehlie started out deep in the pack, but relentlessly pushed on, picking off one leader after another. At the 42-kilometer mark, Daehlie forged into the lead and then brought it on in at 2 hours 5 minutes 8.2 seconds before collapsing out of exhaustion at the finish line.

“I think it’s my hardest race ever,” Daehlie said after being helped off the course by a Norwegian team official and allowed enough time to regain control of most bodily functions.

“Before the race, I didn’t believe in a medal at all. Mentally, I was finished with these Olympics. I was quite tired.

“But then, in the second stage of the race, I saw that my time was good and I thought perhaps I could get a medal. In the last two or kilometers I was completely exhausted.”

Daehlie’s performance here obliterated the record for most gold medals in a Winter Games, and with 12 career medals overall he also surpassed the previous mark of 10, held by Russian cross-country skier Raisa Smetanina.

Daehlie’s is a record of phenomenal consistency, winning four cross-country medals (out of five possible) in each of the past three Winter Olympics:

Albertville, 1992: 3 gold, 1 silver.

Lillehammer, 1994: 2 gold, 2 silver.

Nagano, 1998: 3 gold, 1 silver.

The record will likely rest there, with Daehlie planning to do the same, and deservedly so.

“Right now, I feel I have finished my ski career,” Daehlie said. “I have no motivation.”

Welcome to the club, Bjorn.

Everyone involved in Nagano’s five-ring circus is either tapped out or typed out, trying to feed off the inspirational Daehlie and gut out the few remaining hours until the closing ceremony.

By early Sunday afternoon here, scuttlebutt around the main press center had it that International Olympic President Juan Samaranch would praise the Nagano Games during his closing speech, but would not anoint them with his customary “best Games ever” blessing.

Two years ago, this was cause for great angst in Atlanta when Samaranch, choosing his words most cautiously, assessed the 1996 Summer Olympics as “indeed most exceptional.” Not great, not even good, just “exceptional”--or “quite different from everything else; strange; unusual,” according to the Webster’s definition.

Reportedly, Samaranch and his staff have been agonizing over the text of his speech, grappling over the proper wording.

“Best Winter Games ever”?

Samaranch bestowed that title on Lillehammer four years ago, a title most longtime Olympic observers believe should have been retired then and there. Then, it was more than empty praise--Lillehammer truly did put on the finest Winter Olympic festival on record.

As IOC executive board member Kevan Gosper of Australia put it, “In Lillehammer, there were 16 days of blue skies, white snow and cold temperatures. Here, Siberia sent them everything in the book.

“About the only thing we didn’t have was a brush fire. [But] they managed to find a way through.”

Just like Daehlie, the Nagano Olympics kept grinding and grinding. Through hail and blizzard and earthquake and avalanche warning, they managed to stay on their feet, all the way to the finish.