Warner Puts Hart in Fast Lane

Bethany Hart had an immediate advantage over the other brakemen Bonny Warner had tried out as potential bobsled partners.

Unlike track athletes Shauna Rohbock, Vonetta Flowers, DeDe Nathan and Gea Johnson before her, Hart had been in a bobsled before she and Warner teamed.

“Bethany is a breath of fresh air,” Warner said. “I don’t have to say, ‘This is the bobsled runner. This is where you sit. These are the brakes.”’

Hart’s knowledge of which way is up can be only a good thing, considering Warner chose her only Sunday, and the U.S. Olympic bobsled trials take place Friday and Saturday at Utah Olympic Park.

Two U.S. women’s duos, each with a driver and a brakeman, will qualify for the Salt Lake City Games and the first women’s Olympic bobsled competition. An already tense race among drivers Warner, Jean Racine and Jill Bakken intensified last week, when Racine dropped longtime brakeman Jen Davidson and lured Johnson out of Warner’s sled, all in the name of shaving a hundredth of a second off their push times. Warner slid with Davidson on Saturday and finished seventh in a World Cup race at Calgary; she was seventh the following day with Hart, whom she almost chose at the beginning of the season before she selected Johnson.

In the bobsled world, this has been semi-scandalous. Racine and Davidson had become the faces of the sport, earning $500,000 in endorsements together and getting their faces on cereal boxes and in TV commercials. Warner, a three-time luge Olympian, had been getting good results with Johnson and had reason to believe she would finally get her hands on a medal.

Then Johnson walked away to join Racine, leaving a stunned Warner to plot new strategy. Her immediate thought, she said, was what to do next rather than brooding over what had happened.

“I always look forward. I don’t look back, and I was looking forward to pulling another rabbit out of the hat,” Warner said. “What transpired was probably not ... let’s just not go there. It was unfortunate circumstances and not any of my doing and not any of Jen’s doing.”

Warner and Hart worked on their starts Monday in Calgary before leaving for Utah and more practices. The brakeman’s efficiency in sprinting outside the sled and pushing it for 15 meters before jumping in is a matter of precise timing and technique; Warner said Hart, who slid to a second-place finish with Racine earlier this season when Davidson was resting, has all the right qualities to succeed.

“Bethany would eat dirty socks, she’s so eager and young and fresh,” Warner said of her 24-year-old brakeman. “Bethany has a lot of raw talent and I do have access to some extra training resources. Obviously, time is short as far as the trials, but we have six weeks until the Olympics. Bethany told me she learned more in two days [with Warner] than she did this season.”

Hart, a former hammer throw All-American who finished fifth at the 2000 U.S. Olympic trials, welcomed the chance to slide with Warner.

“A week ago, I didn’t think this would be happening. I thought maybe I’d be an alternate,” said Hart, who began sliding in July. “When we went to Europe [for World Cup racing] in November, I worked with Bonnie the first week or two weeks there, so we know each other. Definitely, unity counts, and timing.”

She has already learned Warner is a demanding teammate. “She tells you what she wants, and it’s good to have guidelines,” Hart said. “I do what I’m told and go from there.”

And someone in this game of musical brakemen will go home without all that nice, free Olympic gear. At 39, Warner knows this is probably her last chance at that elusive medal--and she’s determined to grab it.

“Every one of the three drivers has considered the thought someone will be left behind,” Warner said. “I’m a realist. But I’m also an eternal optimist and fighter, and I hope it is not me.”

Everyone’s a Critic

Like many college football fans, Jeremy Bloom is outraged over the college football rankings compiled by the bowl championship series system.

But Bloom, a freestyle skier, has special insight: He was offered a scholarship to Colorado and was promised time as a wide receiver but postponed his plans to try to win a spot on the U.S. Olympic team at the Salt Lake City Games.

Colorado was cheated of a chance to compete for the national title, according to Bloom.

“Oh, for sure,” he said. “It couldn’t be any worse for Colorado to have Nebraska ahead of them. Any other team would have been at least OK. But it’s pretty unfortunate you beat a team by as much as we beat them and they’re in the Rose Bowl.”

Bloom, of Loveland, Colo., made the U.S. ski team as a 15-year-old high school freshman. He also played football, and was prepared to shift his focus until U.S. ski team coaches told him he had a good chance to make the team for the Salt Lake City Games. He withdrew from college to preserve his NCAA eligibility, and Coach Gary Barnett promised to hold Bloom’s scholarship for him.

It might be a while, though, before he uses it. Bloom finished third at a World Cup meet Dec. 1 at Tignes, France, and followed that with another third-place showing at Steamboat Springs, Colo., Friday. Those results should get him to the Olympics, fulfilling a longtime dream.

“Right from the start, I’ve never looked back,” Bloom said of his decision to put off playing football. “I’ve had some thoughts of regret, but they pass really quickly.”

Throw That Rock

To the uninitiated, curling is a strange spectacle that resembles a cross between bowling, shuffleboard and a fast-food restaurant cleanup crew taking care of a French-fry spill.

But according to Ann Swisshelm, a member of the team that won last week’s U.S. Olympic trials and earned a spot at the Salt Lake City Games, the sport is far more complicated.

“I describe curling as team golf on ice. It’s the only sport I can directly relate it to,” said Swisshelm, who combined with skip (team captain) Kari Erickson, Erickson’s younger sister Stacey Liapis and Debbie McCormick to compile a 9-1 record in last week’s tournament at the Ice Sheet at Ogden, Utah.

“One of the great things about the game is it’s a true team sport. We’re not a super team, like basketball or hockey. We build our own teams and our own communication structures. Finding the right people to do that with is a true joy.” Two teams of four players take turns pushing a 42-pound stone toward a target of concentric circles at the other end of a 146-foot long ice surface. The object is to get the stone as close to the center of the circles as possible. Teams score points for each stone that’s closer to the center circle than the opponent’s best stone.

Teammates take brooms and frantically sweep the ice after a stone is thrown, hoping to reduce friction and increase the distance the stone travels. The team with the most points after 10 ends--think of innings--wins the match.

Blair’s a Spectator Now

Bonnie Blair is a familiar sight at Olympic speedskating trials. But this time, she’s a spectator and cheerleader for her husband, Dave Cruikshank, who’s trying to qualify in the 500.

Blair won six Olympic medals--five gold and one bronze--to become the first American athlete to win that many medals at the Winer Games. She’s also the first American woman to win five gold medals. She retired after the 1994 Lillehammer Games and is now the mother to 31/2-year-old son Grant and 11/2-year old daughter Blair.

“I am very envious and jealous of these athletes as they get to compete in the Olympics at home, here in America, something I never got to do,” said Blair, who moved the family to Salt Lake City to help her husband’s training but keeps a home in Milwaukee. “But I’m glad I didn’t have to go through the change to clapskates.... Yes, I miss it, but I’m happy with my life now.”

Blair will be at the Games through her work for various corporations. She’s optimistic the U.S. speedskaters will do well.

“We’ve got a lot of talent, which is great,” she said. “In Nagano, we probably had the most top-10 finishes in the history of U.S. speedskating [15]. This year there could be more. How many actually medal, I don’t know.

“We’ve got a lot of great shots. The potential is there. With the Olympics, anything can happen.”

Here and There

Five-time Sydney medalist Marion Jones was in Ghana last weekend to help inaugurate a program intended to help vaccinate the country’s infants against five deadly diseases. The initiative is being carried out by the Ghanian government, the Vaccine Fund and Olympic Aid. The latter organization is a nonprofit group largely driven by athletes who hope to use sport and play to enhance child development around the world.

British rower Matthew Pinsent was chosen to replace Czech track and field standout Jan Zelezny on the International Olympic Committee’s Athletes’ Commission. Zelezny recently resigned.... Runner’s World named high school sensation Alan Webb and distance runner Deena Drossin its runners of the year. Drossin, of Agoura Hills, won the U.S. long-course cross-country title, the national 15K road championship, the U.S. 10,000-meter title and finished seventh in the New York City Marathon. Her marathon time of 2:26.58 was an American marathon debut record and the fastest by an American woman since 1991.