Predictions

Men

500: Apolo Ohno and the rest of the U.S. team have been skipping most World Cup races this season, preferring to train in Salt Lake City, so the standings are skewed. Still, the leader in the 500, Li JiaJun of China, is a formidable foe for Ohno. So too are South Koreans Kim Dong Sung and Min Ryoung, and Japan’s Takafumi Nishitani. Nishitani, in fact, is the defending Olympic champion, and Li and Kim are both Olympic medalists. Canadian Francoise-Louis Tremblay and Ohno’s teammate and friend, Rusty Smith, also figure in the mix.

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1,000: South Koreans Kim, the defending Olympic champion, Min and Lee Seung Jae lead the World Cup standings, but Ohno, his teammate Dan Weinstein and Li will be strong contenders, as will Canadians Marc Gagnon and Tremblay.

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1,500: This race is new to the Olympics but not to the Olympians, who have been skating it in World Cup competition. Ohno ranked first in it last season--as he did in the two shorter races--and will be favored. But round up the usual suspects--Li, Gagnon, Min, Lee and Tremblay, then throw in Bruno Loscos of France.

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Relay: The relay is traditionally the wildest of the wild when it comes to short track and, truly, any good team can win it. But look for the U.S., China, South Korea, Canada and Japan to battle it out.

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Women

500: If you predict that a Chinese skater named Yang--named Yang Yang, actually--will win this race, you probably won’t be far off. The unsister Yangs pretty much rule, between them having won it three of five times in World Cup competition this season. Yang A. Yang is first in the standings and Yang S. Yang is second. Bulgarian Evgenia Radanova, champion last season, is third.

The Yangs make for one of short track’s delightful little nuggets. In Chinese, their names are spelled differently but sound the same. To differentiate in English, initials were employed, an L for large for the older of the two, an S for small for the younger. The older didn’t much care for the “large” designation, however, and changed the L to an A. The younger didn’t mind being “small” and kept the S. Thus, Yang A. Yang--or Yang Yang (A) as it’s sometimes seen--and Yang S. Yang, or Yang Yang (S).

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1,000: Look for another Yang-Yang battle but throw in a South Korean with a rhyming name, Sun Dandan, to keep them honest. Yang A. and Yang S. rank 1-2 in World Cup standings in this event as well, and Sun is third. Radanova, Park Hye Rim and Joo Min Jin of South Korea, and American Amy Peterson figure to be among the contenders.

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1,500: This is a new Olympic race for the women as well as the men but they have been skating it in World Cup too, and guess who dominates. The Yangs, A. and S., finished 1-2 last season and Yang A. leads this season’s standings. Radanova, Joo, Sun and Chikage Tanaka of Japan will give them a run for their money.

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Relay: China, thanks to the Yangs, South Korea, Canada, Bulgaria, Japan, Italy and the U.S. all have shots in this scramble.

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Mike Kupper