Host City Doesn’t Wilt to the Weather and Sets Standard That Salt Lake City Aims to Surpass

The Olympic caldron went out in Nagano on Sunday night, and, no, it wasn’t because of a blizzard or a freezing monsoon.

The Survivalist Games, the first Winter Olympics to almost get called on account of winter, came to their designated conclusion on time, amazingly with all the Alpine ski events completed a good 28 hours before the closing ceremony.

For a while, it looked as if the slalom and giant slalom events would have to be rescheduled for February of 2002, in Salt Lake City, which will have one distinct advantage over Nagano when it hosts the next Winter Games:

It isn’t anywhere near the Japan Alps.

Representatives from Salt Lake City were on hand at Sunday’s closing ceremony to take the baton, with Nagano Mayor Tasuku Tsukada symbolically passing the Olympic flag to Salt Lake City Mayor Deedee Corradini.

Then Salt Lake City was allowed to put on a show, a five-minute presentation designed to “give you a good flavor of how we plan to do things,” according to Frank Joklik, head of the Salt Lake City Olympic Organizing Committee.

Following colorfully clothed flower girls, snaking Japanese lion dancers and traditional miyadaiko drummers into Minami Nagano Sports Park were whooping cowboys on horseback, rustlers with twirling lassos and a rambling, rumbling stagecoach--a foot-stompin’ Knott’s Berry Farm revue in the shadow of Zenkoji Temple.

By the end of those five minutes, with a glowing red-yellow-and-blue Salt Lake City 2002 logo poking its head out of an imitation plastic butte, Nagano’s Games had never looked better.

International Olympic Committee President Juan Antonio Samaranch withheld his customary “best Games ever” declaration during his closing speech, instead praising Nagano’s “wonderful volunteers” and congratulating the city and Japan for “the best organization in the history of the Olympic Winter Games.”

Atlanta organizers winced when Samaranch made a similar omission at the closing ceremony of the 1996 Summer Olympics--Samaranch describing those troubled Games as “most exceptional.”

But honesty is a cherished quality in Japan, and what was Samaranch to tell the people here after Lillehammer raised the bar almost impossibly high with its joyous 1994 festival?

The crowd inside the stadium cheered as Samaranch spoke, happy to receive the compliment.

The praise was accurate too, with Nagano weathering everything the testy weather gods could throw at the place with a smiling resilience and a never-flagging efficiency.

These Games were plagued by everything from white-outs to driving hailstorms to avalanche warnings to even an earthquake, leaving athletes, officials and media to wonder what could possibly be next? Locusts? Well, several restaurants in Nagano City did serve steaming plates of deep-fried grasshopper during the Games.

The Alpine ski events in Hakuba were hardest hit, the elements forcing dozens of race postponements and six days with no skiing at all.

Organizers had no other option than to backload the Alpine schedule, cramming five races--four medal events--into two days. The Alpine tripleheaders and doubleheaders taxed the skiers and wreaked havoc with media coverage, often forcing reporters to opt for one event over another--Hermann Maier in the men’s super-giant slalom or Picabo Street in the women’s downhill?

If IOC members had done their homework, none of this came as a shock. World Cup ski races in Japan are historically problematic and at the 1993 world championships in Morioka, the men’s super-G was never held--the only time in the history of the Winter Olympics or the world championships that an Alpine medal event had to be scratched.

Remarkably, the skiers plowed through the slush and the sleet for several memorable performances, including:

* Maier crashing spectacularly during the men’s downhill, walking away and going on to win gold medals in super-G and giant slalom.

* Street’s stunning victory in the women’s super-G, barely a year after undergoing extensive knee surgery.

* Germany’s Katja Seizinger winning gold medals in women’s downhill and combined to become the third female Alpine skier to win gold medals in three different Winter Olympics.

Beyond the weather, the Nagano Games will also be remembered for:

* Tara Lipinski’s surprising victory in an all-American shootout with Michelle Kwan for the women’s figure skating championship.

* Buffalo Sabre goaltender Dominik Hasek leading the Czech Republic to successive upsets of the United States, Canada and Russia en route to the gold medal in the first Olympic men’s hockey tournament to permit NHL all-stars.

* Norwegian cross-country skier Bjorn Daehlie winning his Winter Olympic record sixth, seventh and eighth gold medals.

* The United States winning the first Olympic gold in women’s hockey.

* And athletic excellence from the hosts, ranging from ski jumper Masahiko Harada bouncing back from disgrace in Lillehammer to launch an Olympic-record jump of 137 meters to Hiroyasu Shimuzu winning Japan’s first Olympic speedskating championship with a gold medal in the men’s 500-meter event.

The United States left Japan with six gold medals and 13 overall, equaling its previous Olympic bests, but below projections of 18 by U.S. Olympic Committee officials.

American disappointments included, first and foremost, the “Dream Team” men’s hockey team, which won only one game--against lowly regarded Belarus--and trashed two of its living quarters in the athletes’ village after being ousted in the quarterfinals by the Czechs.

Also failing to win medals as projected were men’s figure skater Todd Eldredge, who fell during his long program and finished fourth; the U.S. giant-slalom snowboarders, who wiped out amid treacherous conditions better suited to penguins; and Brian Shimer’s four-man bobsled crew, which finished two-hundredths of a second shy of a bronze medal.

“I would have been happier if we had won 18 medals,” U.S. team mission chief Paul George conceded, “but I’m extremely pleased with the depth of this team. Our previous high in top-10 finishers was 41; we had 60 top-10 finishes here.

“And look at our eight fourth-place finishes--Eldredge, [moguls skier Donna] Weinbrecht, Shimer, just to name three. They were close, very close. . . .

“You never want to be in an Olympics where you’re not competitive, completely overmatched, and I didn’t feel like that at all. We were in the hunt.”

USOC Executive Director Dick Schultz acknowledged, “We had some disappointments” but pointed to the youth and potential of this U.S. squad.

“I think we can do 20 medals in Salt Lake City,” Schultz said. “I’d be disappointed if we don’t make a substantial improvement from where we are now.”

Joklik said Salt Lake City is eagerly awaiting the challenge, while acknowledging that Nagano had left him with a tough act to follow.

“I’m full of admiration for the event they put on here,” Joklik said. “I have been here 3 1/2 weeks and I’m unable to put a finger on anything they didn’t do well or could have done better.”

Those things that Nagano organizers could control, anyway.

By way of note, Joklik would like to point out that “in Salt Lake City, the record has been that conditions for winter sports in February are particularly good.”