Don’t Believe Your Eyes--Nagano’s Games Were Fine

How will history remember the Nagano Winter Olympics?

As boring and as bland as a 32-6 Super Bowl blowout, to borrow the imagery of Rick Gentile, executive producer of CBS’s much-slammed Winter Olympics coverage?

Or deceptively significant, a good show obscured by early snowstorms and CBS’ innovative plausibly lame tape-delayed reporting?

Since returning from Japan, I have heard the same sentiments expressed on radio talk shows and during dinner conversation: The Nagano Olympics were not compelling, not memorable, a veritable cliff dive in terms of excitement from the splendor and drama that was Lillehammer ’94.

But is that the reality . . . or just a sorry symptom of what will forever be remembered as CBS (stands for Canned & Bottled Sports) Syndrome?

As a pure sporting event, the Nagano Olympics were tricky, because after a snowbound stumble out of the gate, they rallied furiously at the end, saving three historic story lines--Tara Lipinski, Dominik Hasek, Bjorn Daehlie--for the final 72 hours.

First impressions, of course, can be deadly, and Nagano’s were a dreary procession of snowed-out ski races and sports sections filled with weather updates.

But the Winter Olympics are a 50-kilometer Nordic marathon, not a short-track speedskating sprint, and taken as a whole, from Hermann Maier to Picabo Street to the U.S. women’s hockey team, the Nagano Games were a better-than-average Olympics, a good Olympics.

Comparable, even, to the lauded Lillehammer Olympics.

Lillehammer’s reputation is buoyed by the unprecedented spectacle of Tonya vs. Nancy, which was simply the sports story of the decade. That seamy saga of sequins, a tire iron and hit men was a ratings rocket not likely to be seen again in this millennium--or the next.

But for all the intrigue and soap-opera trappings surrounding the women’s figure skating competition in Lillehammer, the end result--Oksana Bauil over Nancy Kerrigan, with Tonya Harding nowhere in the medal picture-- pales in comparison to Lipinski’s thought-to-be-impossible upset of Michelle Kwan in Nagano.

Likewise, the men’s figure skating competition in Nagano had Ilia Kulik winning with the most demanding long program in Olympic history, Elvis Stojko dragging a wounded right leg through seven clean triple jumps en route to the silver medal and Philippe Candeloro rescuing the bronze with a show-stopping impersonation of D’Artagnan the musketeer.

Lillehammer? Brian Boitano fell, Kurt Browning fell, Victor Petrenko two-footed a landing . . . and an obscure Russian named Alexei Urmanov was left to hold the gold medal--in his dainty white lace gloves.

Elsewhere, Nagano can pretty much match Lillehammer highlight for highlight.

Lillehammer had Tommy Moe turning the world of Alpine skiing on its head with an American gold medal in the men’s downhill; Nagano had Picabo Street in the women’s super-G.

Lillehammer had Sweden holding off Canada in a spellbinding shootout for the men’s hockey gold medal; Nagano had Hasek shutting out Canada in a semifinal shootout, then shutting out Russia in the final to give the Czech Republic the most surprising Olympic hockey gold medal since the United States’ “Miracle On Ice” in 1980.

Lillehammer had Dan Jansen finally winning gold after rounds of previous Olympic disappointment; Nagano had Masahiko Harada, the Japanese ski jumper who failed his country in 1994 only to clinch the team gold medal in 1998 with a tape-measure leap of 137 meters.

Lillehammer had Bonnie Blair becoming the most bemedaled U.S. Winter Olympian with a career total of five golds and one bronze; Nagano had Norwegian cross-country skier Daehlie winning his Winter Olympic- record sixth, seventh and eighth gold medals.

Lillehammer had Georg Hackl winning his second consecutive Olympic luge gold medal; Nagano had him winning his third consecutive Olympic luge gold medal.

Lillehammer had the United States winning an all-time high of 13 medals; Nagano had the United States winning 13 medals again, including its first medals in luge and the first gold medal to be awarded in women’s ice hockey.

And Lillehammer had nothing to equal the crash-and-burnish-two- gold-medals virtuosity of Maier, an Alpine uberhero for the ages.

Believe it or not, Nagano put on a fairly interesting show. Every day there were good stories waiting to be told . . . and waiting . . . and waiting, if you were watching CBS.

No amount of snow or sleet or hail or pea-soup fog could bury these stories.

Only CBS could.

LONG ROAD AHEAD FOR BROKEN-DOWN STREET

Street flies home today, her left leg pieced together with a metal plate and a handful of screws, her skiing career potentially in tatters.

The multiple femur fracture Street suffered in a horrific spill Friday during a women’s downhill race in Crans Montana, Switzerland, is the worst injury of her career--more serious than the torn knee ligaments of December 1996, which sidelined Street for nearly a year.

Patrick Ravussin, chief anesthesiologist at the Sion hospital where Street underwent surgery Friday, told reporters Saturday: “A simple break is easier to recover from than something like her ligament injury, [but] a complex fracture--in this case, a multiple fracture--is hard to put back together. Her bone was fragmented in several places. . . .

“We can easily imagine that she will overcome this as she overcame her last ligament injury. But to know when or how she will make her return to skiing in difficult.”

Doctors in Sion estimated that Street will need about six months to recover from the injury before being cleared to resume skiing.

But whether Street can regain her form as one of the world’s preeminent women’s skiers is, at this point, in doubt.

U.S. skier Kristina Koznick, who placed fourth in Saturday’s women’s slalom at Crans Montana to clinch second place in the World Cup women’s slalom standings, acknowledged that Street “is a fighter, so I can’t imagine her giving up and saying it’s over. But sometimes it is enough. I would say it’s 50-50, really.”

RULE 1: JUDGES MUST REFRAIN FROM NAPPING

This just in: The president of the International Skating Union acknowledges there’s a problem with international ice dance judging.

“Regretfully, in ice dance, the problem of ‘stable’ results still exists,” Ottavio Cinquanta said last week from Lausanne, Switzerland. “I believe that the remedy for this problem is to introduce changes in the rules, thereby giving the skaters and the judges more specific references.”

Cinquanta said he would propose “technical adjustments” to the scoring system, such as increasing the worth of the free dance to a team’s total score. That, he said, might make the final night of competition something less than a foregone conclusion.

Such changes, according to Cinquanta, would help remedy the problem more than what he called “exaggerated criticism of the judges.”

Cinquanta was in Nagano and watched the Olympic ice dancing.

He should know, therefore, that no criticism of the judges there could ever be classified as “exaggerated.”

FORGET THE STATS, HE’S THE FASTEST

Donovan Bailey lost to Maurice Greene in the 100-meter sprint at last year’s World Track and Field Championships, finished third behind Greene and Jon Drummond last week in Australia and recently watched Greene break the indoor 60-meter record, yet the Jamaican Canadian still insists he’s “the world’s fastest human.”

“It’s been proven since 1994,” Bailey said in a conference call last week to announce his participation in this summer’s Goodwill Games in New York.

“My intention is to go out and do what I do and stay No. 1. That’s what my plans are.”

And about that third-place finish in Sydney?

Injuries, Bailey said. Back and foot problems, and sciatica.

“I shouldn’t have been competing outdoors this early in the year,” he said.

Bailey and Greene will race again in the Goodwill Games on July 21. Greene has predicted he will break Bailey’s 100-meter world record of 9.84 seconds this year, which prompted Bailey to predict that he will break it first.

“All I have to do is stay healthy to break the world record,” Bailey said. “I’ll run some relays in April and a couple small meets to get the kinks out and then get into the thick of things in May and June.”

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A World of Their Own

Tara Lipinski’s decision to withdraw from the World Figure Skating Championships in Minneapolis March 31-April 4 means that there will be different women’s Olympic and world champions for only the fifth time since 1908.

When Olympic and world figure skating championships are held during the same year, the women’s Olympic gold medalist has won the world title 14 times.

The years when the women’s Olympic champion did not win the World Championships:

Year Olympic Champion: World Champion

1994 Oksana Baiul, Ukraine: Yuka Sato, Japan

1956 Tenley Albright, U.S.: Carol Heiss, U.S.

1952 Jeannette Altwegg, Britain: Jacqueline du Bief, France

1908 Madge Syers, Britain: Lily Kronberger, Hungary