They’re Gold Medalists in Finger-Pointing

Alrighty then. That settles it. Saturday night’s competition at the Palavela proved that if you put the world’s best short-track skaters on the ice and they all stay on their skates, the South Koreans will win. It’s that simple.

It’s all over but the armistice signing. So there’s no more need for South Koreans to send death threats to Apolo Anton Ohno or threaten to boycott U.S. imports or any of the other ways they have simmered and plotted since Ohno’s controversial gold medal in the 1,500 short-track speedskating final four years ago.

Ahn Hyun-Soo won the 1,000-meter gold medal with his countryman, Lee Ho-Suk, riding shotgun, relegating Ohno to the bronze medal. For good measure, Ahn beat Ohno in their quarterfinal and semifinal heats as well. And just to eradicate any doubts about who rules the short track, South Koreans went one-two in the women’s 1,000 meters.

“It’s not only recently that we’ve won,” Ahn said through an interpreter. “Korea has been the leading country in short track for a long time.”

(They need two interpreters at the Olympics: one for the words and one for the meaning. Because what Ahn meant was: “Where have you been? We’re not new to this. We’ve been running things.”)

They feel so entitled that when referring to his fruitless trip to Salt Lake City in 2002 Ahn said, “I missed my gold medal.” His. As if it was supposed to be shipped to him and got lost in the mail.

But he and Ohno were part of that four-person pileup in the 1,000-meter final in 2002 that allowed Australia’s Steve Bradbury to walk away with the gold. And he felt South Korea’s agony over the disqualification of Kim Dong-Sung in the 1,500 meters, which led to gold for Ohno.

That made Ohno public enemy No. 1 in South Korea these past four years, as well as Topic A in the medalists’ news conference Saturday night. Ohno’s name came up in question after question to Ahn, and right after a direct query about the “unfortunate incident in Salt Lake,” Ohno popped his head into the interview room.

“We were just talking about you,” the interpreter said.

With Ohno seated next to him, Ahn gave a diplomatic answer about how he could understand the unhappiness with the decision, but as an athlete he recognized that anything could happen.

Anything can happen in short-track speedskating, where it ain’t over until well after it’s over. Every race is followed by a congregation of men wearing suits and skates on the ice -- such a silly combination it almost makes the figure skating costumes look dignified -- as they rule on whether there were any infractions.

Reading the quote sheets after every round of the men’s and women’s events Saturday night reminded me of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina: finger-pointing all around. Apparently no one ever just loses in short track.

A Canadian woman blamed a Russian woman. A Chinese woman blamed a Hungarian woman. A Hungarian man blamed a Canadian man. A Canadian man blamed a Chinese man.

This sport is more litigious than a David E. Kelley show. The Canadian contingent filed a protest over the finish of the 500-meter women’s final, arguing that Bulgarian Evgenia Radanova’s front skate was not, as required, flat on the ice when she crossed the finish line two spots ahead of Canadian Anouk Leblanc-Boucher. The protest was dismissed by the Court of Arbitration for Sport on Saturday.

And how many other competitors in these Games have an entry marked “Defamation Case” in their online bio?

Randy Smith sued U.S. teammate Tommy O’Hare four years ago because O’Hare accused Smith and Ohno of fixing an Olympic qualification race.

But Smith was making definitive rulings, not complaints on Saturday. He showed no bitterness about his fourth-place finish, saying: “The end result was the best three guys in the world got an Olympic medal, and I was behind them.”

Then he got with the Olympic spirit, saying, “I always sit here and listen to people say it: ‘If you give it your best, it’s worth it.’ I always said it was bull, winning an Olympic medal’s more worth [it] than skating your best. But I might disagree with that right now. I skated well all day, better than I have all year, and it’s made the last four years extremely worth it to me.”

Of the Koreans he said: “The Koreans are skating really well. You’ve got to give it to them. They’re on top of their game. But it’s not like we’re off by a whole lot.”

Ohno sounded ready to let all of the controversy die. He sounded as if he had worried more about himself than what the Koreans thought of him, as he wondered where he had gone wrong in falling down in the 1,500. He opened himself up to friends and family more than he had during past competitions, and applied the feedback to this night of racing. He concentrated on staying out of trouble in the earlier rounds to give himself a shot at the medal stand. In that case, mission accomplished.

“This is a huge success for what I came here today,” Ohno said.

Relative to some other Americans’ failures Saturday, that was true.

But his response to the final question of his news conference showed that he got it. When the moderator asked if he had anything more to say, he replied: “Nope. I don’t think so.”

The results on the track said it all.