| Torino
2006:
A Preview of the Olympics
By
Jack Kintner
Aside
from the Seattle Seahawks playing in the Super Bowl February
5, the month will also be notable for the Twentieth (XX)
Winter Olympics, February 10 to 24 in Torino, Italy, the
home of Fiat and the place where solid chocolate was first
produced in the late 1700s. An industrial city, it has
a metropolitan population of about 1.7 million people.
It’s sometimes called “Turin” in English
but all the symbols and so on say “Torino,” so
that’s what I’ve used in this rather slanted
and opinionated look at this year’s winter games.
On The T.V.
If you think of the Olympics as primarily a sporting event,
the coverage by CBC television in Canada will in general
be superior to that provided by NBC in the U.S. If you’re
after spectacle, personalities and lots of figure skating
then you’ll like NBC better. Happily, most people
in this area will be able to choose.
What Am I Looking At?
Of the 15 different winter Olympic disciplines, the only
competitions that will actually take place in the city
of Torino are the ones on ice: hockey, figure skating,
and speed skating. An exception is curling, which like
snowboarding has been assigned to a town where it will
be the only competitive event. Torino is also where the
opening and closing ceremonies will be held and where one
of the Olympic Villages will be located.
Curling is a new Olympic event this year and will be held
50 kilometers west of Torino in Pinerolo, a town of 35,000.
Farther west, into the eastern valleys of the Alps, lies
a complex of five towns – Cesana, Claviere, Sansicario,
Sauze d’Oulx and Sestriere. Together with the oldest
ski resort in France, Montgenevre, it forms one of the
largest complexes of connected ski areas in Europe, the
sun-drenched Vialattea (“Milky Way”). It has
250 miles of interconnected high-altitude ski runs topping
out at 9, 315 feet, and all but the French resort will
host the alpine, nordic and fixed track events, which includes
everything you’d expect to find in a ski area plus
luge, skeleton and bobsled but not snowboarding. That’s
being held way off by itself near the French border in
a small (3,000 people) and picturesque mountain town (elevation
4,300 ft.) called Bardonecchia. The Italian web site says
that it’s a “lively town with a number of good
bars,” so the isolated boarders should feel right
at home.
Who Are The Favorites?
Anything can happen, of course, in a two-week competition
that sportscaster Jim McKay immortalized with the famous
line, “The thrill of victory, the agony of defeat.” Pay
no attention to the clucking of US Ski Team officials,
scolding a media-savvy Bode Miller for slips of the tongue,
or of Canadians like the self-inflating Don Cherry getting
upset with defending gold medalist Beckie Scott for not
wanting to spend valuable training time carrying the flag
in the exhausting, “hurry-up-and-wait” opening
ceremonies. As Madonna said, “It’s all about
marketing.” What follows is my more or less educated
guess about who might be left standing on a podium at the
end of the day.
Snow
Nordic Events include the Biathlon, which as the name implies
combines two skills, in this case target shooting and cross-country
skiing. It will be held in Cesana. It’s dominated
by the Scandinavians but the Norwegian Frode Andresen,
a strong skier and so-so shot, lost a World Cup 12.5 KM
pursuit race to crack shot and improving skier Ricco Gross
of Germany on January 20.
Cross country skiing, held in Pragelato, brings back Canadian
Beckie Scott of Vermillion, Alberta, who not only won the
first gold medal ever in cross-country by a Canadian at
the Salt Lake City games, she just won a double pursuit
of two 7.5 KM legs in Oberstdorf, Germany. For men, the
German Tobias Angerer dominates the sport. American Andrew
Newell has an outside chance.
Ski Jumping is also held in Pragelato, and watch for the
American Todd Lodwick, who just won the U.S. championships
going away, beating former two-time Olympian Clint Jones
by 10 points (that’s a lot).
The Nordic Combined involves making two ski jumps and skiing
a cross-country race all on the same day, and is also held
in Pragelato. The Finn Hannu Manninen is the favorite.
Most of the alpine events are being held at Sestriere Borgata
for men and five miles west of there at Cesana for women.
Bad Boy Bode Miller is the first US skier since Yakima’s
Phil Mahre (20-plus years ago) to have podium finishes
in all four world cup disciplines, so while the control
freak U.S. Ski Team coaches whine about Miller using the
wrong fork, he should win his share though recently he’s
had some mediocre results.
In the slalom, a technically demanding race, the favorite
is Italian Giorgio Rocca, a cop when not racing. Last year
he won a world cup slalom in Chamonix by the unheard of
margin of 1.33 seconds, as if the second place finisher
walked for the last two gates.
In the other disciplines, Giant Slalom, Super G and Downhill,
and the Combined (2 slalom and one downhill run in one
day), Miller is joined by American Daron Rahlves, winner
of this year’s Lauberhorn world cup race, Canadian
Erik Guay and, of course, Austrian Hermann Maier, “the
Herminator,” as favorites.
For the women, Lindsey Kildow leads a strong U.S. team,
but Croatian Janica Kostelic and Austrian Michaela Dorfmeister,
who’s been winning and who will retire at the end
of the season, dominate the discipline.
Freestyle skiing will be held at the 4,430 foot resort
of Sauze d’Oulx. Look for Canadian Amber Petersen
to challenge current world cup points leader Evelyne Leu
of Switzerland in aerial competition, and for defending
gold medalist Jeret Peterson to repeat for the men. Last
summer Peterson parlayed $5,000 into over $200,000 playing
blackjack in Las Vegas, and still may be on a roll. In
the bumps (Moguls), favorites include American Michelle
Roark and, for the men, Canadian Alexandre Bilodeau and
American Toby Dawson.
Snowboarding competitors will have the 4,300 foot high
village of Bardonecchia all to themselves. We hope for
the best. The Americans, led by Carrot Top look-like Shaun
White and Lindsey Jacobellis, the girl on the VISA commercial,
figure to dominate except in the parallel Giant Slalom,
where the defending gold medalist, Swiss boarder Philipp
Schoch, figures to repeat. New this year is the Snowboard
Cross (SBX), where from four to six competitors race down
a parks course side by side, as if you crossed roller derby
with a posse going after rustlers. Jacobellis could make
history by medalling in both halfpipe and SBX, two very
different disciplines.
Prepared Track
Events will be held in Cesana, including the Bobsled (which
is called bobsleigh everywhere else in the world). Texan
Todd Hays currently leads the world cup standings and may
win two golds, in two and four man competition.
For people who have lost all their marbles there’s
Luge, in which either you or two of you go feet first down
the same track as the bobsled, and Skeleton, in which one
of you goes down head first, neither conveyance much bigger
than a cafeteria tray. You go, not me.
The leading woman competitor in Luge is a German (natch)
with the unfortunate name of Silke Kraushaar. Two Canadian
women, just as tough, may medal in Skeleton: Lindsay Alcock
and Mellisa Hollingsworth-Richards. The Americans are either
fighting their coach or fighting over their coach, and
either way are already out of it.
Ice
Curling is going to be held in a new facility in Pinerolo,
and the Swedish women may challenge the Canadians, who
will dominate the event.
And finally, to the ice rink in Torino, first for Ice Skating, which was crooked
as a back-alley crap game in Salt Lake City, and in which this year Michelle
Kwan was given a spot on the US team and a pass on having to qualify for it on
the ice mostly because, hey, she’s Michelle Kwan. This is one event where
I really don’t care, since the people who are quite ready to ruin athletes
suspected of doping when a cold pill may give a positive result are themselves
somehow immune when caught blatantly cheating. It’s pretty, I guess, but
like the TV show “Survivor,” it just ain’t real. This year
I understand their medals will be brass, tin foil and wood.
Speed Skating will pit the Russians against the Canadians and Americans, just
like the good ol’ days. American Joey Cheek, from Greensboro, NC, just
won the World Sprint Speed Skating Championships at Heerenveen in the Netherlands,
followed by Jeremy Wotherspoon of Canada. American Shani Davis, world record
holder at 1,000 meters, is an outside medal possibility. The Russian women, led
by Svetlana Zhurova, back from maternity leave (it’s just not the same
old Evil Empire any more, I guess), will dominate as American Jennifer Rodriguez
continues to fade.
Hockey will boil down to the Canadians and Americans on the women’s side.
Either could win it all, but if the game is called closely then the Americans,
who sometimes play like ham-fisted bruisers, will lose. For the men, the Canadians
will repeat, especially since the Russians won’t have Nikolai Khabibulin
in goal, injured last week playing for Chicago in the NHL.
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