Dad’s Arrival Cheered

Tom Wilczak says he’ll find a way, as he usually does, to “finagle” his way to the finish line tonight after his daughter, Becky, makes her fourth and final run in the women’s singles luge at Utah Olympic Park.

No, he won’t have the right credential to get there in these security-drenched Games, but the 55-year-old River Forest, Ill., resident didn’t seem concerned about that Tuesday, the day his daughter made her Winter Olympics debut.

“I’m sure there are ways,” he said with a smile that stretched all the way to Chicago, and why would anyone doubt him.

After all, he made it to Salt Lake City despite a liver that turned on him in 1987. Wilczak has autoimmune hepatitis and likely needs a liver transplant within months to survive.

Tuesday he was feeling just fine, a little weak as usual, but just fine. “This is Becky’s dream, to make the Olympics,” he said. “For me to be here is just phenomenal.

“I can’t tell you how much this means to me.”

An hour later, he watched on TV in a tent above the finish line as Becky made the first of her two Tuesday runs. He watched as two solid efforts gave her a total time of 1:26.990 and fourth place.

That’s probably the best he or she could hope for. As expected, the German team dominated, with Sylke Otto, Barbara Niedernhuber and Silke Kraushaar placing 1-2-3.

Otto finished in 1:26.432. Niedernhuber, Kraushaar and Wilczak trailed her by .048, .086 and .558 seconds, respectively.

Barring a major German miscue, Becky won’t win a medal. Her father didn’t seem to care. .

“It doesn’t make any difference as long as I’m there to hug her at the end,” he said.

That’s where the hugs always come when Becky is racing, and her dad didn’t expect to see her until then.

“It’s just our rule,” he said, explaining that he didn’t want to “jinx” his daughter. “It’s after the last run.”

Tom Wilczak wasn’t really sure he’d make it to the Games until his plane landed Monday night in Salt Lake City. There was the matter of his health--he had 21/2 gallons of fluid drained from his stomach area Monday--and the fact a suitable liver could become available while he was at the Games, even though he’ll return home Thursday.

His doctor put his mind at rest about the first issue. “He said you can be just as sick there as here,” Wilczak said.

After that he probably was coming regardless, but the Salt Lake Organizing Committee put his mind at rest last Thursday when it offered a private jet to whisk him home if necessary.

That was a relief for father and daughter. “I’m happy he’s here,” Becky said after her second run. “For 10 years he’s supported me.”

Now about all that could go wrong ... or right ... would be if a suitable liver became available before Thursday.

“We’ll consider that when we get the call,” Wilczak said. “It will be a real tough one if it’s tomorrow morning.”

Wilczak’s illness has been difficult for his family because training and competition take Becky away from home for months at a time.

She calls home frequently and gets so worried when no one answers that Tom and his wife, Della, change their answering machine message to alert her.

That reflects the close relationship father and daughter share, Della Wilczak said. Tom was the one, she said, who used to pull Becky out of school for an opening-day baseball game and the one who’d take her to see the Christmas windows in Chicago.

And until illness prevented it, he would attend all of Becky’s major races in the U.S. and as many overseas contests as he could.

“I’m so happy he’ll get to watch Becky,” Della Wilczak said, “because this is his dream too.”

*

A volunteer track sweeper lost part of his index finger Tuesday night trying to catch an out-of-control luge sled.

Venezuelan Iginia Boccalandro lost control of her sled near the end of the first heat. She glanced off one wall, flew back across the track and slammed the other wall as she continued to careen down the ice.

Boccalandro landed face-down on the track and slid headfirst for over 30 yards, her racing suit in tatters as she lay motionless. As track personnel rushed to assist, her sled turned around and was headed back toward her.

Just before the 50-pound sled reached Boccalandro, volunteer Drake Self tried to grab it. The sled flipped over and sliced off the tip of his index finger just below the fingernail.

Boccalandro was not seriously injured. She was disqualified for not completing the run.

Associated Press