Seeking to Treat Turin Like Home

Home-ice and home-hill advantage at the Salt Lake City Olympics helped U.S. athletes win 34 medals, the most by a U.S. Winter Games team and a dramatic leap from the 21 medals won by skaters, skiers and sliders at Nagano in 1998.

The language and scenery will be different on the slopes of Sestriere, the sliding tracks at Cesana Pariol and snowboard course at Bardonecchia, but U.S. athletes are ready to make themselves at home on the medal stand at the Turin Games, which begin a year from today.

U.S. athletes won 10 gold, 13 silver and 11 bronze medals at Salt Lake City. Germans won 12 gold medals and 35 overall, and Norwegians won the second-most gold medals, 11.

“We’re looking to win the gold-medal count and the total count,” said Steve Roush, chief of sport performance for the U.S. Olympic Committee. “It would be the first time since 1932 the U.S. will have done that.

“It’s a lofty goal, one we were very close to coming out of Salt Lake City, one we embraced in the months after Salt Lake City. We invested in winter sports and want to avoid the tradition of having a drop-off when you’re not the host.”

Typically, a country fortifies its sports programs before playing host to the Games but its interest and medal count dwindle afterward. U.S. athletes won 12 medals at Lake Placid in 1932 but four at Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, in 1936; 10 at Squaw Valley in 1960 and seven in Innsbruck, Austria, in 1964, and 12 at Lake Placid in 1980 but eight at Sarajevo in 1984.

To break that pattern, the USOC and sports federations decided to approach Turin as if it were a “home” Games. Roush said the USOC would give national governing bodies and athletes $34 million between Salt Lake City and Turin, $1 million more than between Nagano and Salt Lake City.

“It’s still critical for everyone to be competing hard on the ski hill or the bobsled run,” Roush said. “Our battle has been four years of programs and athlete support leading up to the Games and giving them every tool that’s financially feasible to help them succeed.”

Those efforts have led to notable achievements this winter.

Bode Miller won the super-giant slalom and downhill at the Alpine World Ski championships in Italy, the first downhill world title for a non-European man. Daron Rahlves of Sugar Bowl, Calif., was second in the downhill, and Julia Mancuso of Olympic Valley, Calif., won bronze in the women’s super-G and giant slalom.

On the ice, Jennifer Rodriguez of Miami won the long-track speedskating sprint world title last month and short-track skater Apolo Anton Ohno of Seattle won a 3,000-meter race in Hungary last weekend to move atop the World Cup standings.

Among the sliders, Shauna Rohbock and Valerie Fleming set push and track records in winning a World Cup silver medal in the first bobsled race on the Turin track. Noelle Pikus-Pace of Orem, Utah, led the women’s World Cup skeleton standings after six races.

Freestyle skier Jeret Peterson of Boise, Idaho, has won three World Cup aerials events to rule the World Cup standings, and Jeremy Bloom of Loveland, Colo., won his third consecutive World Cup moguls event Saturday in Inwashiro, Japan.

In a potential coup, U.S. men might win a team medal at the nordic combined world championships this month in Oberstdorf, Germany. They are led by 2003 world sprint champion Johnny Spillane of Steamboat Springs, Colo., the lone American to have won a World or Olympic title in nordic combined.

Alan Ashley, vice president of athletics for the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Assn., projects his athletes will win 18 to 20 medals in alpine and freestyle skiing, snowboard and nordic combined. They won 10 at Salt Lake City.

“After looking at how things are shaping up, it’s realistic,” he said. “I believe we’re on target. We’ve been aggressive about this. The idea is to be consistent, day in and day out, and do the work necessary to be the best in the world.

“Athletes and coaches are doing that, and it’s starting to pay off. We’re not there yet, but we’re on the way. I’m thinking next year is going to be pretty special.”

Success in nordic combined would be a novelty. Because of Spillane’s success and top-tier finishes by Todd Lodwick, Ashley said the USSA invested heavily in the sport and made it a priority with Alpine, freestyle and snowboard. Cross-country and ski jumping lag behind.

“It’s a catch-22,” Roush said. “You want to support the ones that have a chance to be successful and make it to the podium but also the ones that traditionally have not been the ones sniffing the medals. It’s tough. In many cases, you’re investing in developing an athlete pool and it may take eight to 12 years to come to fruition.”

Roush also said the USOC analyzed results from the world championships of every sport in the 2003-04 season and found U.S. athletes had 25% more top-eight finishes and 40% more podium finishes than in 1999-2000, the corresponding point before Salt Lake City. A final analysis in April will include the luge world championships next week in Park City, Utah, and the bobsled and skeleton world competitions this month in Calgary, Canada.

Also still to come is the world figure skating championships, next month in Moscow. Michelle Kwan of Manhattan Beach will vie for her sixth world title; Sasha Cohen of Laguna Niguel was the 2004 silver medalist.

Speedskaters led the U.S. medal count at Salt Lake City with 11, three in short track and eight in long track, and should thrive again.

Besides Rodriguez and Ohno there’s Shani Davis of Chicago, who competes in short and long track and won the world allround long track title last weekend. Chad Hedrick of Spring, Texas, was second. U.S. men have dominated the new team pursuit event, potentially another medal at Turin.

“Our goal is one medal more than we did last time, which would be pretty difficult because we were really successful in Salt Lake City,” said Katie Marquard, executive director of U.S. Speedskating. “It was the right athletes, the right coaching, the right programs, right funding for those programs. We have continued a lot of that.”

Increased funding from the USOC and new sponsors have helped sustain those programs. “All of our medalists have returned and that’s a good sign, and there are some new young ones coming in,” Marquard said. “We haven’t really let down since Salt Lake.”

The U.S. haul of three bobsled medals and three skeleton medals in 2002 will be difficult but not impossible to match, said Claire DelNegro, executive director of the U.S. Bobsled and Skeleton Federation.

“We had a sort of medal drought from 1956 to 2002, and 2002 for us was really a dream Olympics,” she said. “We’d love to see that again and we think we’re on track for that.”

Said Roush: “In the ‘04-’05 winter season, we’ve seen some tremendous performances in all of our sports. We’re very encouraged. Our athletes are performing well in World Cup competition or other international competitions. We’ve seen nothing that squelches our optimism.”

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A LOOK BACK

U.S. medals at the Salt Lake City Games:

*--* ALPINE SKIING 2

*--*

* Bode Miller silver in men’s combined, silver in men’s giant slalom.

*--* BIATHLON 0

*--*

*--* BOBSLED 3

*--*

* Silver in four-man, bronze in four-man, gold in women’s two-man.

*--* CROSS-COUNTRY SKIING 0

*--*

*--* CURLING 0

*--*

*--* FIGURE SKATING 3

*--*

* Tim Goebel bronze in men’s singles, Sarah Hughes gold, Michelle Kwan bronze in women’s singles.

*--* FREESTYLE SKIING 3

*--*

* Joe Pack silver in men’s aerials, Travis Mayer silver in men’s moguls, Shannon Bahrke silver in women’s moguls.

*--* HOCKEY 2

*--*

* Men’s team silver, women’s team silver.

*--* LUGE 2

*--*

* Mark Grimmette and Brian Martin silver in men’s doubles, Chris Thorpe and Clay Ives bronze in men’s doubles.

*--* NORDIC COMBINED 0

*--*

*--* SHORT-TRK. SPEEDSKATING 3

*--*

* Apolo Anton Ohno silver in the men’s 1,000 and gold in the men’s 1,500, Rusty Smith bronze in the men’s 500.

*--* SKELETON 3

*--*

* Jim Shea, gold in men’s event, Tristan Gale gold in women’s event, Lea Ann Parsley silver in women’s event.

*--* SNOWBOARDING 5

*--*

* Chris Klug bronze in men’s parallel giant slalom, Ross Powers gold, Danny Kass silver and Jarret Thomas bronze in men’s halfpipe, Kelly Clark gold in women’s halfpipe.

*--* SPEEDSKATING 8

*--*

* Joey Cheek bronze in the men’s 1,000, Chris Witty gold and Jennifer Rodriguez bronze in the women’s 1,000, Derek Parra gold in men’s 1,500, Rodriguez bronze in women’s 1,500, Parra silver in men’s 5,000, Casey FitzRandolph gold and Kip Carpenter bronze in the men’s 500.

* Total -- 34 (10 gold, 13 silver, 11 bronze).