For U.S., to Air Is Golden --and Silver and Bronze

The red, white and blue Games of Salt Lake City added gold, silver and bronze to the color scheme here Monday when the young U.S. men’s snowboarding team swept their sport’s marquee event.

The sweep was the first by an American Winter Olympic team since 1956, taking place before a wildly enthusiastic home crowd that swelled to as many as 30,000 when the morning women’s downhill event was postponed by high winds. The trio of Ross Powers, Danny Kass and Jarret Thomas also succeeded in bringing an Olympic fringe sport into the mainstream.

“With everything that has happened to our country, this is huge,” said Powers, the 23-year-old gold medalist from South Londonderry, Vt. “It’s awesome.”

Awesome was not only the vernacular of the day in this sport of the young and gnarly, but also a description of the performances and the post-competition scene.

Powers was the fourth competitor to go out in the halfpipe event, and when he made his first push above the pipe and soared 15 feet high, the crowds went wild. Kass, 19, from Hamburg, N.J., tried a corkscrew spin and two upside-down twists but was 3.6 points behind Powers’ 46.1--but enough to get the silver. Thomas, 20, of Golden, Colo., was superb with a 2 1/2 spin and height nearly equal to Powers’. That earned him a 42.1, four-tenths behind Kass and just one-tenth in front of Italian Giacomo Kratter for the bronze.

America’s last such sweep took place in Cortina, Italy, when Hayes Alan Jenkins, Ronnie Robertson and David Jenkins took all the medals in figure skating.

It also pushed the United States medal total to six--four of them in snowboarding after Kelly Clark’s gold Sunday in the women’s halfpipe--and made overall American medal success in these Games likely.

The best United States medal efforts during the Winter Games was the 13 won in 1994 in Lillehammer and in ’98 in Nagano.

When the U.S. won just six in the ’88 Games in Calgary, the U.S Olympic Committee faced much criticism. Commissions were appointed to solve the problem and more money was spent on Winter Olympic athletes, leading to projections that the U.S. would win 20 medals in these Winter Games.

But the biggest winner of the Games for the U.S. may be snowboarding.

That is only appropriate, fans say, considering the sport was born in the U.S. in the 1980s when someone decided zipping down a mountain would be more fun anchored to one wide board instead of two skis.

Since then, the sport has had to fight the stereotype of teenage surf or skateboard rats let loose on the slopes, complete with baggy, saggy pants, outlandish hats and a language all their own. That reputation wasn’t helped by boarders’ penchant for buzzing skiers while shredding the mountainsides, or for the flap caused when a snowboarding gold medalist tested positive for marijuana at the Nagano Games.

To be sure, that reputation has changed in recent years. Now, industry analysts say, Baby Boomers who once held disdain for the sport that was largely the domain of a younger generation are now trying it, much to the amusement of boarders, who refer to them as “grays on trays.”

Its popularity is particularly on the rise in the Pacific West, where boarders represented nearly 42% of ski resort visitors last year, industry experts say.

That trend is likely to continue, especially with the likes of Powers serving as the self-appointed ambassador of the sport.

“This is huge for snowboarding, awesome,” said Powers, who held his board high over his head on the top rung of the victory stand and then invited Kass and Thomas to join him. Powers signed autographs for anybody willing to wait, signed tickets, even an American flag. And when one youngster asked for his goggles, Powers tossed them to him.

Lost slightly in the American snowboard sweep was the quest of German Luger Georg Hackl to become the first Winter Olympian to win a gold medal in four straight Games. Hackl did not, but when he took a silver behind Armin Zoeggler of Italy, he still had achieved the first of a medal in his fifth Olympics.

Ten-time World Cup champion Markus Prock of Austria took the bronze and American Adam Heidt, while extending the U.S. drought of never winning a medal in luge, finished fourth, his country’s best ever.

Hackl, at 35 the most successful luge competitor ever, was not the least bit upset.

“Second place is where I belong,” he said. “Armin is the right Olympic champion.”

With the marque women’s downhill postponed by high winds and the pairs figure skating medal to be determined that night, just two other medal events took place.

Andrea Henkel, 24, of Germany won the women’s 15-kilometer biathlon (skiing and shooting) and Ole Einar Bjoerndalen of Norway won the men’s 20K biathlon, defending his Nagano title. Jeremy Teela of Anchorage finished 14th, matching the best-ever American performances by John Burritt in 1960 and Peter Karns in 1972. The U.S. women did not fare as well, Rachel Steer of Anchorage doing the best at 31st.

In the first half of the two-day men’s 500 speed skating event, Casey FitzRandolph of Verona, Wis., posted the fastest time, outracing defending champion Hiroyasu Shimizu of Japan. Shimizu’s world record is 34.32 seconds. FitzRandolph set an Olympic record with 34.42 and Shimizu was second with 34.61. Kip Carpenter, a 22-year-old from Brookfield, Wis., had never skated under 35 seconds, but his 34.68 was good enough for third, going into today’s second and final round.

In curling, the United States team posted an upset in the qualifying tournament when it beat Sweden, the gold medalist from Nagano, 10-5. Tim Somerville of Roseville, Minn., made the clinching shot. And in women’s hockey, Canada won the first game of the tournament, beating Kazakhstan, 7-0. The Kazakhstan goalie, Natalya Trunova, was bombarded and forced to make 59 saves to keep the score respectable.

Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze extended Russia’s dominance of Olympic pairs figure skating Monday night by the slimmest of margins over Canada’s Jamie Sale and David Pelletier.

The Russians collected seven 5.9s for artistry, enough to give their nation its 11th straight gold medal, dating to 1964. Sale and Pelletier earned the silver medal and China’s Shen Xue and Zhao Hongbo won the bronze.

American champions Kyoko Ina and John Zimmerman finished fifth but said the performance was “the greatest thing we’ve ever done.”

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Associated Press contributed to this report.