Ohno Near Finish Line?

Short-track speedskater Apolo Anton Ohno cruised through his heat and into the quarterfinals of the 500-meter sprint, then sounded melancholy Wednesday night about the end of the Winter Games drawing near, perhaps the end of his Olympic racing career as well.

Ohno, the 23-year-old from Seattle who won gold and silver at the 2002 Games in Salt Lake City and who picked up a third Olympic medal here, a bronze, in the 1,000 meters, said after racing Wednesday, “It’s my last week of the Games. Basically, I just want to enjoy every single race I have. I don’t know. It’s been a long time since I’ve enjoyed 500s like that ...

“This is unbelievable, this experience. My second Olympics -- came through again, I was able to get on the podium. Very happy. Very happy.”

Told as he talked to reporters that his comments sounded wistful and asked if this was indeed his last Olympics, he said, “I don’t know.... This is my last week. That’s how I’m thinking of it. But I don’t know. I love sports so much, everything about them, especially amateur sports. But I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m only focused on this last week.”

Asked when he would decide if he would resume a racing career that has made him the soul-patched, bandanna-wearing American face of short-track speedskating, he said, “Probably the next couple months.”

Ohno has two more medal chances here -- the 500 and the 5,000 relay, both Saturday. He said he felt “very confident” in the 500, winning his heat Wednesday in 42.836 seconds.

Also moving on to the quarterfinals were South Koreans Ahn Hyun-Soo and Lee Ho-Suk. Ahn and Lee went 1-2 in the men’s 1,500 and 1,000 in Turin.

The other U.S. skater in Wednesday’s 500 heats, Anthony Lobello, 21, of Tallahassee, Fla., one of 50 men featured in November’s Cosmopolitan magazine “Bachelor Blowout,” did not advance, falling in his heat and blaming it afterward on a chunk of ice that gave way underneath him in the explosive manner of a glacier calving into the sea.

Lobello, 5 feet 11 and 175 pounds, said, “The ice isn’t all the same. I mean, it’s a different temperature all over the ice. So you could find a soft patch and I’m probably one of the heaviest guys out there. So I just crush it.”

In the only medal event of the evening at the Palavela, South Korea won the women’s 3,000-meter relay in 4:18.74. France took silver, Germany third. The U.S. team finished fourth.