Ceremony Gave Them the Shivers

Remember all those warnings from Salt Lake City organizers about bringing your warmest clothes?

Apparently, the word didn’t get to the Dutch Olympic team, whose best athletes refused to carry their flag during Friday’s opening ceremony for reasons you won’t believe.

It’s too cold.

Only eight of the 30 members of the team even agreed to march in what were expected to be 20-degree temperatures.

By process of elimination, the flag bearer was rookie snowboarder Nicolien Saurbreij, who has never finished higher than 15th in any major event.

It was either her, or an embarrassed Dutch Olympic official, because nobody else on the team wanted to do it.

Two-time gold medalist Gianni Romme would have been the obvious choice to carry the flag, especially because he does not compete until the 10,000-meter speedskating event Feb. 22.

Yet he told reporters he didn’t want to get cold.

At a Winter Olympics?

“That is sad,” said Jacques Rogge, IOC president.

Bill Plaschke

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What’s in a Name?

One of the biggest questions leading into Monday’s scheduled Olympic women’s downhill is what Picabo Street will name her skis.

OK, maybe not.

It is true, though, that the two-time Olympic medalist does have pet names for her skis.

“My ‘Arnold’s’ are a definite contender,” Street said this week.

Also under consideration are her “Jomos,” “Chachos,” “Ernsts” and “Uncle Leos.”

Street said her “Jomos” are named for her brother’s dog, who was run over by a car just before Christmas.

“I’m hoping that he’s fast because I’d love to have him take me down the mountain,” she said.

Street won’t make a final ski decision until after this weekend’s training runs on the Olympic course named “Wildflower.”

Street and her ski technician will choose a pair of skis that best suits snow conditions.

You think this selection process is superstitious hogwash?

In fact, picking the right skis can be the difference in winning or losing a gold medal.

At the 1998 Nagano Games, Street won the gold medal in super-giant slalom, not her best event, by making a tactical and somewhat sentimental decision to ski the race on her “Olys,” the longer downhill boards on which she won the silver medal at Lillehammer.

Street gauged correctly the course was designed more like a downhill than a super-G and won the gold by one-hundredth of a second.

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A Nervous Groom

Jonna Mendes earned the “Honest Olympic Moment” award this week when she faced reporters at a U.S. Alpine team news conference.

“I’m nervous,” she said. “My heart is racing like you wouldn’t believe. A lot of people say we should treat it like any other race. It’s a lot easier said than done.”

Mendes, 22, isn’t expected to contend for a medal, but she found out how much the Olympics mean when she recently returned home to Heavenly Valley, Calif., and was stunned that workers at her local ski resort had groomed a run for her so that she could train.

“They spent the whole night grooming the entire thing for me,” Mendes said, “and I got to just take fast runs down it all morning. They closed the whole thing off for me. The Olympics aren’t just another race.”

Chris Dufresne

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That’s Not My Bag

The Italian contingent that arrived in Salt Lake City this week had seven pieces of luggage lost, including pair skater Ruben De Pra’s suitcase that contained his skates and a practice costume.

De Pra had replacement skates sent to Utah, but he had to miss two days of practice before they arrived.

Even with the luggage mix-up, Italian National Organizing Committee Secretary General Raffelle Pagnozzi said this is the best organized of the five Olympics he has attended.

His only other complaint: not enough variety of food.

J.A. Adande

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Camping or Cheating?

U.S. cross-country skier Justin Wadsworth, an outspoken foe of doping, wasn’t sure if sleeping in a tent that simulates high altitude constituted cheating. “I had to do some soul searching,” he said.

But in the end, he decided it wasn’t unethical and became one of a couple of skiers who use the device.

“I sleep at 13,000 feet and then I ski at Mount Bachelor and it feels like I’m at sea level,” he said. “It’s incredible.... There’s definitely a physiological change.”

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It’s the Coolest

U.S. moguls skier Shannon Bahrke resisted friends’ suggestions last summer that she look at the Olympic course at Deer Valley resort, which seats more than 13,000 spectators.

“I was like, ‘No, I don’t want to. It’ll make me nervous,’” she said. “When we first came up for the Gold Cup [competition] I almost crashed my car. It was like, ‘Oh my gosh. That’s the bottom of my course.’

“But I think it’s awesome. It’s amazing. To have this kind of venue at the bottom of your mogul course is something you dream about, so it’s pretty cool.”

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That’s Not Normal

Short-track speedskater Rusty Smith of Sunset Beach, on the U.S. team’s new skin-tight slick racing uniforms:

“They’re supposed to be really fast and we’re all really excited to race in them for the first time. They aren’t real comfortable, either. They were probably designed for normal people and normal people don’t look like us.”

Mike Kupper

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Gun Control

The guns and ammunition that will be used by biathlon competitors will be stored at the Soldier Hollow venue during the Games. However, rifles can be taken outside the venue, in contrast to the rules in effect at Nagano in 1998.

Teams were asked to bring ammunition in one load to Soldier Hollow by today; the anticipated total is 210 rifles and several hundred thousand rounds of ammunition.

All vehicles entering the venue are thoroughly screened. Equipment used by biathletes was stored in separate containers so in case someone hijacked a van of athletes, rifles and ammunition wouldn’t be together.

“We trust the athletes. We just don’t want it to fall into the wrong hands,” said Scott Blackburn, public safety venue commander.

Helene Elliott

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Navel Exercises

A little reminder of Los Angeles will accompany Polish snowboarder Jagna Marczulajtis on her way down the mountain. Marczulajtis, who competes in the parallel giant slalom event, had her belly button pierced at Venice Beach when she visited Los Angeles.

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Pins Aren’t Dropping

The unofficial currency of the Winter Games is pins: food pins, sponsor pins, sports pins. Even the FBI has pins.

Want something copied for free? Give the clerk a pin. Need a cab driver to wait while you dash to the ATM? That’ll cost you two pins. Don’t have a pin to trade? Welcome to the loser’s club.

An urban legend has it that 17 million pins were traded at the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles, and that’s before bartering really got hot.

Pin traders are everywhere around Salt Lake City. Some specialize. Others aren’t picky.

For Harvey Davids, it all started in 1988 in his Calgary collectibles shop. Someone covering the Winter Games gave him an ABC network pin.

“I somehow got hooked,” he says. “It’s every parent’s nightmare. The circus comes to town and the kid runs away. The Olympics came to town and I haven’t missed one since.”

The Salt Lake Organizing Committee has authorized about 600 retail pins, but there are hundreds of nonprofit organizations that have permission to produce pins for fund-raisers.

On top of those are the hundreds of unofficial Olympic pins that poke gentle fun at Utah and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

Candus Thomson, Baltimore Sun

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No, It’s the Other One

When you first hear John Paul Jones’ name mentioned at the Winter Games, you wonder what one of America’s greatest naval heroes is doing at 11,000 feet.

But this Jones was Army, and he too is a hero worthy of note.

Thousands of skiers each year ride a high-speed lift to a ridge to get to a trail that all bear his name at the Snowbasin resort, site of the downhill and Super-G races.

When World War II broke out, his expert skiing drew the attention of the Army, and he was recruited to serve in the elite 10th Mountain Division, the first ski troopers.

The Ogden, Utah, native trained as a medic and shipped out.

On Feb. 20, 1944, Jones was killed during the battle for Mount Belvedere in Italy.

After the war, his friends returned home and named the prominent mountain edge “John Paul Ridge” and it stuck.

Times-Post Wire Service

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Hail to the Phone

Sasha Cohen, the figure skater from Laguna Niguel, gave her mother a surprise during the opening ceremony Friday night.

Talking on her cell phone to her mother while standing amid the U.S. athletes’ delegation near the end of the ceremony, Cohen suddenly handed the phone over to the man mingling in the crowd and asked him to speak.

“Hi,” the man said, obligingly. “I’m the president.”

There was no record Friday night of how Cohen’s mother, Galina, responded to George W. Bush.

Randy Harvey