Olympic Dreams Create New Heroes

A Mexican American man, a Cuban American woman, a Japanese American man, an African American woman, these have been our Olympic heroes.

Derek Parra, dark hair, dark skin, dark eyes brimming with tears and singing the words to the U.S. national anthem, a young man from San Bernardino wins a speedskating gold medal and you can be sure that right now, today, there are little boys in Milwaukee and Duluth, in Palm Springs, Fla., and Palm Springs, Calif., in the desert, in the swamps, little boys of different colors are asking their moms or dads or grandmoms or granddads if they can’t please, please have speedskates and a trip to the ice rink.

Jennifer Rodriguez, daughter of Cuban refugees, tan skin, sweet smile, unassuming and shy and very, very fast wearing a pair of skates, is overwhelmed by her emotions and embracing her two bronze speedskating medals and showing us that we have a country where, truly, anything is possible. It must be if a little girl from steamy Miami can become one of the best speedskaters in the world.

Apolo Anton Ohno, raised by his Japanese father, nearly lost to juvenile delinquency and bad influences on the streets of Seattle, has become a 19-year-old heartthrob (“I would do anything to meet Apolo, he is so cool,” said a young lady in front of a junior high school Friday. Her friends all nodded enthusiastically) and a symbol of toughness and class for the way he handled prickly situations in short-track speedskating.

Vonetta Flowers, an African American woman from Alabama, a practitioner of a more traditional sport, track and field, until her husband found a flier at a track meet looking for volunteers to push a bobsled, wept and sang, sang and wept, during the national anthem, wept and talked, talked and wept throughout her press conference after winning a gold medal.

At the beginning of these Olympics, columns were written chastising the U.S. and the Winter Olympics for being too monochromatic, too white, too filled with iconoclastic backwoodsmen from Vermont and Montana and without enough black, yellow and brown athletes from our cities.

As if these things can be forced.

As if the United States Olympic Committee can just pluck Latino boys or African American girls from Los Angeles or Atlanta and make them into skiers or skaters or sledders.

What is so cool about Parra and Rodriguez, Ohno and Flowers, is that they found their own way to the ice and snow and they found their way because, more than anything, they wanted to be Olympians and represent their country.

If someone wants to ask “Who’s got next?” in the skating rinks and ski and snowboard hills, the answer is going to be the U.S. because, after these Winter Games, more and more kids of different ethnic backgrounds are going to be drawn to the sports that have captured our attention the last two weeks.

More important than all the judging controversies and scoring controversies and international wailing about “North American bias” is the emergence in these Games of new faces. Just as the U.S. was in the lead in making women’s sports an appealing and popular part of the Olympic program, the U.S. will be in the lead in making the Winter Olympics truly multicultural.

This won’t make us any more popular. The 30-something medals the U.S. will end up winning are only going to increase in Turin, Italy, in four years if U.S. sports federations capitalize on Parra, Rodriguez, Ohno and Flowers.

A single bobsledder, Bonny Warner, put up fliers at a single track meet in Sacramento and found Flowers. A single father, Yuki Ohno, sent his recalcitrant son to Lake Placid to keep him out of trouble and to have him take out his aggressive athletic talent on the ice and not on the street. If U.S. speedskating officials are smart, they will find a way to get to other fathers and mothers in the city and figure out how to get some skating rinks built.

Two in-line skaters, Parra and Rodriguez, were persuaded that their Olympic dreams could only be fulfilled on the ice. So they put away the wheels. U.S. speedskating officials should be scouring the concrete sidewalks and walls for a few more like them. Dan Jansen and Bonnie Blair are the past. The future is not in West Allis, Wis., home of this nation’s best speedskating indoor ice facility. It’s on the streets and in the parks where kids are wearing kneepads and helmets and wheels.

The next great U.S. luger might be in Texas, the next great speedskater could be in Phoenix.

A Russian official, in the course of complaining about alleged anti-Russian bias, said these Salt Lake Games had come to resemble those of 1936 Berlin. This was meant as an insult, to compare the U.S. with Nazi Germany.

But in a way, the Russian was right. This is a little like 1936.

In 1936 Jesse Owens showed the world that a man of color not only deserved to play on the world’s biggest sporting stage but that he was good enough to win. And in winning, Owens showed the world that sport was only made better by his participation, that a man of color could set the bar higher, which is what great athletes in all countries should want.

Parra, Rodriguez, Ohno and Flowers have come to the Winter Olympics and set the bar higher here at home. They’ve told us we’d do well to find more Winter Olympians from unexpected places to come to Turin in 2006.

They’ve set the bar higher for the world, too. They won’t be going away, not now, not when little U.S. boys and girls of all colors might want to be Winter Olympians.

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Diane Pucin can be reached at diane.pucin@latimes.com