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S.L. Games have gone on without a hitch — mostly
By Lee Benson
Deseret News columnist
It's down to a hockey game and a cross country ski race now, after which the flame will be doused at Rice-Eccles Olympic Stadium this evening, not to be lit again until the Olympics return to Greece for Athens 2004. We're sending the Olympic Games back where they came from. And thanks a lot for coming.
If we'd known it would be this much fun, we'd have tried to get the Olympics earlier. Oh, we did.
Well, the wait was worth it. The weather was mostly excellent, the getting around was easy, the competitions were high Olympic caliber and the 15,000-strong security force might as well have been Maytag repairmen.
Even periodic uproars by Canadian figure skaters and the Russian Olympic Committee and South Korea, where they obviously take their short track very seriously, were easy to take. Less than six months after 9-11, give me a sports argument anytime. They all blow over by the next day anyway. Or at least by the next Olympics. Name me one that didn't.
You know the world's getting healthier when you turn on CNN and they lead off with "Our top story, from Salt Lake City, is about allegations of judge tampering in figure skating . . . "
I have sympathy for the Russians, by the way. As a matter of fact, they did seem to be picked on, especially when their cross country skier, Larissa Lazutina, wasn't allowed to participate in the women's 4X5K relay last Thursday because of a high hemoglobin count, thereby bouncing the rest of the team from the competition as well.
It is hard to understand how Lazutina could win two silver medals earlier in these Games, both of which required mandatory drug-testing after the race, and then not be cleared to ski again in the relay. If she had medaled in the relay — and that was the way to bet since Russia had won every 4X5K Olympic relay since Calgary in 1988, the last two with Lazutina on the team — she would have collected the 10th medal in her career and tied Raisa Smetanina, the legendary cross country Russian champion, as the winningest woman Winter Olympian in history.
Maybe no big deal in a country where cross country skiing ranks just above Parcheesi in popularity, but to Russia it was more like Barry Bonds getting within one home run of Mark McGwire and then getting benched. Or, to use a winter sports parallel, Picabo Street being disqualified before the start of a race.
What's more, Lazutina would have had to pass another drug test if she had medaled, which would have been the appropriate time to definitively determine the legality of her blood.
Small wonder the Russians threatened to pack up their red coats and march home.
But no one has refused to march onto the podium and receive their medals, and no one has used the medal ceremony as a place to make political statements, as has happened before.
At least, not so far.
With only a few highly publicized exceptions, the competition at the Salt Lake Winter Games has been decided on the snow and the ice, where it should be. Some athletes have stayed upright, some haven't, some have been faster than others, and some have been luckier.
I'll take memories from every venue with me from the Games of 2002, and maybe none will linger longer than the men's 1,000-meter final at the short-track venue — of all places — when an Australian, of all people, won the gold.
Steven Bradbury was so far behind the four leaders, including the favored Apolo Anton Ohno, that when they collided and went down in a heap, he glided across the finish line like a 'roo crossing the Outback.
In the stands, Steven's parents looked on in disbelief. His mother shook her husband and said, "They've all fallen over, John. . . . Steven's got the gold medal!"
Every two years, the Olympics happen.
As we now know from firsthand experience, that's a good thing.
Lee Benson's column runs daily during the Olympics. Please send e-mail to benson@desnews.com and faxes to 801-237-2527.
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February 24, 2002
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