Salt Lake Berths Come Early for Some Americans

Although most winter sports won’t announce their Olympic teams until next month, a few athletes can start packing their bags for Salt Lake City.

Derek Parra of San Bernardino and Jennifer Rodriguez of Miami, inline skaters who made successful transitions to the ice, are the first skaters to qualify for the U.S. Olympic long track speedskating team.

Parra earned a berth at 1,500 meters by finishing fourth at Innsbruck, Austria, last weekend. Rodriguez will compete in the women’s 1,500 after winning silver medals at that distance on consecutive weekends of World Cup competition.

“I’m happy because now my wife can use those tickets we bought for the Olympics,” said Parra, who finished second in the 1,500 at the world single distance championships last March.

Kristina Koznick of Burnsville, Minn., earned the first U.S. Olympic ski team berth by being the top U.S. finisher at Saturday’s Alpine Cup race at the Loveland Ski Area in Colorado. Koznick, third overall behind Karin Kollerer of Austria and Veronika Zuzulova of Slovakia, also won $10,000. “I’d be lying if I say I didn’t come for the money,” said Koznick, who has trained on her own since she had a falling-out with U.S. ski team officials.

Becky Wilczak of River Forest, Ill., has earned a spot on the women’s luge team. Mark Grimmette of Muskegon, Mich., and Brian Martin of Palo Alto clinched a men’s luge doubles berth.

Carrying a Torch

Maria Garcia isn’t sure what the Olympic torch looks like, or how to hold it.

“I went to the Salt Lake 2002 Web site to check. I think it’s kind of heavy,” she said.

But the silver-and-glass torch will probably feel like a feather when she takes her turn Jan. 15 among the 11,500 torchbearers chosen to carry the flame to Salt Lake City. The 16-year-old Carson native recently learned she also will participate in a ceremony marking the torch’s arrival at the Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles.

“It’s kind of shaped like a baseball bat,” said Garcia, the U.S. junior short track speedskating champion, “so I’m going to practice running and lifting a baseball bat. It’s quite difficult but hopefully I’ll do OK.”

With any luck, her Olympic experience won’t end there. She has a strong chance of making the U.S. team and an outside chance at winning a medal.

Garcia began skating five years ago through the Southern California Speedskating Assn., which gets funding from the AAF. She climbed rapidly through the ranks and finished fourth overall at the U.S. senior short track championships last year. However, she was ineligible for the world meet because she was 15, too young by International Skating Union rules.

This season, she won the U.S. junior trials despite being sixth after the first day’s competition. And she’s busy preparing for the Olympic trials next month in Salt Lake City.

“At the U.S. championships I was fourth overall and they take the top six,” she said. “If I skate like I know I can, I think I can make the team. But in short track speedskating, things can happen....

“By the time I do the torch run, I’ll know if I’ve made the team. But even if I don’t make the team, this will be so cool.”

It Figures

For Sasha Cohen of Laguna Niguel, finishing third at last week’s Lalique Trophy figure skating competition in Paris was a mission half-accomplished.

She interrupted her quest to become the first woman to land a quadruple jump in competition, but still fell twice during her long program. However, because the event became a splat-fest, Cohen won her first medal in a Grand Prix event.

“We wanted to try and get two clean programs, and we got one,” said her coach, John Nicks. “She had a very good short and a not-very-good long. But none of the ladies skated well.”

Sarah Hughes fell twice and two-footed another jump, and Maria Butyrskaya of Russia fell three times. Hughes’ long program was ranked first, lifting her from fourth to second behind Butyrskaya.

Cohen, 17, missed the quad at the Finlandia Trophy, the Masters of Figure Skating and Skate America. She decided to omit it in Paris before her long program began.

“I don’t think the percentage of completion is that high,” said Nicks, who estimated she lands it 25% of the time. “If we can get that up, I’m sure it will be back in.”

Considering she missed last season’s U.S. competition because of a back injury, Nicks isn’t unhappy with her results. She must finish in the top three at the U.S. championships in January at Staples Center to earn one of three women’s singles spots on the U.S. Olympic team.

“She was making three or four mistakes in the long program and still getting 5.6s and 5.8s for presentation,” he said. “We’re zeroing in on nationals, and if she skates two clean programs I’m confident she will do very well and be on the Olympic team.”

The Grand Prix series continues this weekend with the Cup of Russia in St. Petersburg. Angela Nikodinov of San Pedro needs a top-three finish to qualify for the Grand Prix Final in December. It will be her first competition since the death last week of her coach, Elena Tcherkasskaia.

Talking Turkey

Jackie Berube, who went to the world weightlifting championships in Antalya, Turkey, on her own after security concerns led U.S. officials to keep the team home, wished she had had company.

“I’m really glad I went,” said Berube, who finished fifth in the 58-kg weight class. “It was an awesome trip. I would have liked to have done a little better, but I have no regrets.”

Berube was protected by two female bodyguards--”they looked more like runway models than security people,” she said--and encountered no danger at her hotel or the competition hall. She said her teammates would have had a similarly safe experience.

“I believe they should have come. I think they would have enjoyed it,” Berube said. “It’s a beautiful city on the Mediterranean.... The Turkish people did an incredible job. It was very well run.

“Security was more than adequate. I had no problems.”

Her next competition, next month’s American Open, is in a less exotic locale: Syracuse, N.Y. “A little closer,” she said, “but I don’t like flying.”

Here and There

Swedish center Peter Forsberg, on sabbatical from the NHL’s Colorado Avalanche, is being pressured by compatriots Markus Naslund and Niklas Sundstrom to play in the Olympics. They have been friends since their junior days, and Forsberg told Swedish reporters he would enjoy a reunion.... Sweden will miss defenseman Calle Johansson, who had rotator cuff surgery.

U.S. and international ski officials said Wednesday cold weather and forecasts of snow enabled them to confirm men’s World Cup slalom races Sunday and Monday at Colorado’s Aspen Mountain. Warm weather led to the cancellation of a giant slalom at Aspen and downhill and super giant slalom races at Beaver Creek.... The same warm spell sent U.S. ski jumpers to Finland for training. Alan Alborn of Anchorage was sixth in the Continental Cup 120-meter event last weekend and will compete in Friday’s World Cup season opener in Kuopio, Finland.

All three U.S. sleds finished in the top five in Sunday’s World Cup bobsled race at Konigssee, Germany. Jean Racine and Bethany Hart were second in 1:40.09, Bonny Warner and Gea Johnson were third in 1:40.20 and Jill Bakken and Shauna Rohbock were fourth in 1:40.29. Germany’s Susi Erdmann and Tanja Hees won in 1:39.95.

A Canadian Olympic diver who rescued a pregnant woman trapped when her car plunged into the Bow River will be honored for bravery by the Calgary Fire Dept. Jeff Liberty dived into the chilly water and pulled Shannon Roberts from her car. Neither was hurt. “I don’t know if it’s from my diving, but keeping calm in a stressful situation helped me out,” said Liberty, 19th in the three-meter springboard preliminaries at Sydney.

The U.S. women’s 800-meter freestyle relay swim team at this year’s world championships will get duplicate gold medals to replace those lost when the quartet was disqualified because a swimmer left the blocks early. Problems were later found with the timing system.... Fencer Derek Snyder of Chatsworth, 18, won a bronze medal at a junior men’s World Cup meet in London.

Only 78 days until the Salt Lake City Winter Games.