Olympic Question: How Now, Kildow?

American skier Lindsey Kildow now has a herd of one.

“I have a pet in Europe,” Kildow beamed after being presented with an 8-year-old brown cow by local dairy farmers when she won a World Cup downhill at Val d’Isere in France over the weekend.

“Last year I had a lot of top-three results, but we didn’t really get any prizes, just money, so this is really awesome.”

The cow is named Olympe, which seems only fitting because Kildow is a medal favorite at the upcoming Winter Games in Turin, Italy.

Kildow has parked the beast on a French farm and later will ship it to a new home near the U.S. Olympic team’s training base in Austria.

“I’ll miss her for a while, but oh well,” Kildow said. “We’re not going to be together, but hopefully she’ll be thinking about me.”

Trivia time: Who won the men’s ice hockey medals at the last Winter Olympics?

More bovines: Olympe is by no means the first cow to make sporting news.

There is also Juliette, the cow that was given to tennis star Roger Federer by tournament officials in Gstaad, Switzerland after Federer won Wimbledon in 2003.

And then there is the unnamed cow that was trotted out by fans of the Uruguayan soccer club Rocha FC and paraded through the streets earlier this month.

It seems big-city media in Montevideo had poked fun at the rural club after pictures from one television station showed a cow grazing in the background while the players trained.

But Rocha FC had the last laugh when it became the first team from outside Montevideo to win the title in 73 years.

It’s a goal: Jeff Gordon of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch has this question, “Now that the Dodgers have added Mia Hamm to their wives section, are they a sure bet to return to the playoffs?”

Wide awake: Looking to the Jan. 3 Penn State-Florida State game, Bud Geracie of the San Jose Mercury News says that, “the ridiculously long halftime show should allow Orange Bowl coaches Joe Paterno, 78, and Bobby Bowden, 76, time to catch a nap.”

Paterno, by the way, turns 79 today.

Stamp of approval: During the time John Wooden was winning NCAA championships by the, yes, OK, bucketful at UCLA, Brad Sherman was a student on the Westwood campus.

Now, Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks) is in Congress, and he has introduced a bill to name the Reseda post office in Wooden’s honor. “Should be a slam dunk,” Sherman predicted.

Wooden, 95, lives in Encino, where he buys his stamps at a post office named after the late Laker announcer Chick Hearn.

Trivia answer: Canada won the gold, the U.S. won the silver and Russia won the bronze.

And finally: Greg Cote of the Miami Herald says Pat Riley didn’t take it well when the Heat was beaten by the Cleveland Cavaliers. “We hear the loss hit him so hard he had to be talked out of resigning to spend more time with Stan Van Gundy’s family.”