U.S. Players Tasted 31 Flavors of Defeat

By HELENE ELLIOTT

June 24, 1998 12 AM PT

Some American hockey players trashed their rooms at the Olympic Village in Nagano when they were eliminated from the hockey tournament. The only damage American soccer players did in France was to the food provisions at the Chateau de Pizay, their elegant home away from home.

The team left Monday, when the French team moved in. According to L’Equipe, staffers said there’s no way the French players could possibly match the stunning amount of ice cream the Americans consumed.

“Never have we seen athletes wolf down so much ice cream and sweets,” one of the managers said.

Olympics

Helene Elliott

Helene Elliott was with the Los Angeles Times’ Sports department from 1989 to 2024, first as a staff writer and then, starting in 2006, as a columnist. She became the first female journalist to be honored with a plaque in the Hall of Fame of a major professional sport as the 2005 winner of the Hockey Hall of Fame’s Elmer Ferguson Award, awarded to writers “who have brought honor to journalism and to hockey.” A native of Brooklyn, N.Y., and graduate of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, she has covered 18 Olympics.

U.S. Players Tasted 31 Flavors of Defeat

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