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February
8-17 , 2002: 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, UT
A
Gold Medal Vacation
Part
1 • Part 2: Let the Games Begin • Part
3
The First Weekend
Our travel
out of New York City required a 5 AM wakeup, a theme which would develop as the
week went on. Our flight into Salt Lake on February 8th, the day the Olympics
officially opened, had been moved forward several hours so that the airspace above
the city could be closed — for security reasons — prior to the Opening
Ceremonies.
We didn't attend
those ceremonies — at an astronomical $885 a ticket, they were too rich for
our blood — but my parents did, bundled up in ski suits and blankets to brave
the 20¡ temperatures. Armed with bags of swag, they partook in audience-participation
routines involving flashlights and whistles, some of which were doubtlessly lost
on the viewers at home, even those of us situated only half a mile away from Rice-Eccles
Stadium in the Jaffe family TV room. But we did have a pretty good vantage point;
camped on the couch, we could see the fireworks and the flame of the Olympic Torch
right out the window.
Our first event
wasn't until Monday, so we skied at Snowbird the first weekend, coming home each
night to a hot tub and a full evening slate of Olympic events, including the hallowed
Men's Downhill, which my parents attended at Snowbasin ski resort, about 35 miles
north of SLC.
Monday: Women's
Downhill
My parents'
trip to Snowbasin was something of a dry run for us, as our schedule began with
the Women's Downhill, set for 10 AM Monday morning. With a two-stage shuttle and
a pass through security, this translated into a 5 AM wakeup for a 6:30 bus. Wrapped
in three layers of clothing and our snow gear, armed with heating packets, granola
bars, cowbells (it's tough to clap with gloves on, so race fans wave 'em), binoculars
and film, we were ready.
Unfortunately,
the elements were not on our side. We arrived at 8 AM and staked out our spot
in the standing zone of the finish arena. At 9:25, we received an announcement
that high winds at the starting gate had forced a delay until 11. At 10:25, a
similar announcement told us we were delayed until noon, with a jury decision
to come at 11:15 as to whether even that would be possible. At 11:35 the event
was postponed until the next day. Drag.
Tuesday: Women's
Downhill Again and Women's Luge Preliminaries
Though we
took advantage of our previous day's experience to choose a better vantage point,
Tuesday was like déjà vû all over again — and not
just the 5 AM wakeup. We endured two more hour-long delays before the event finally
went off. Our anxiety over whether it would take place was very real, as we had
another event —
the Women's Luge Preliminaries — scheduled for 4 PM in another canyon, and
one of our centerpiece events scheduled for the following morning. But right
about the time we were seriously considering the possiblity of eating our tickets
and moving on, the announcement came that the race could proceed. It finally
began at 12:10 PM.
The Downhill is
the premier speed event in Alpine skiing, as the skiers blast their way down 2,700
vertical feet of steep slopes (grades as steep as 58% on the Womens' Wildflower
course and 74% on the Mens' Grizzly course) and blind jumps, mostly while holding
a tuck position. Positioned at the bottom of the run, we watched the skiers hurtle
down the first minute of the course on a Jumbotron. Each one came into plain sight
having gone airborne over a jump called Lind's Launch (named after Hillary Lind,
the American Silver Medalist downhiller from 1988) and speeding down to the finish
line.
Much to our surprise,
French
skier Caroline Montillet won the race. Starting 11th in a field of 39 racers,
having never won a World Cup Downhill, she was hardly a favorite, but her time
withstood challenges by some of the more renowned skiers, including Italy's Isabel
Kostner, Austria's Michaela Dorfmeister and Renate Goetschl (World Cup runner-up),
Switzerland's Pernilla Wiberg (the '98 Silver Medalist), and American favorite
Picabo Street, running in the final race of her amazing career. The crowd went
wild for Street, who trains in Park City, Utah, and who has overcome two major
injuries in becoming the most accomplished American female skier ever (she won
a Silver in the Downhill in '94 at Lillehammer, and a Gold in the Super G at Nagano
in '98). But her start from the 26th position came at a time when the course had
softened up considerably in the sun, and though she was technically adequate,
she finished a disappointing 16th. Street didn't seem too broken up about it,
and drank up the crowd's enthusiasm as she bid them farewell.
We stuck it out
until about the 30th skier, by which time the final Top
Ten was locked up, and then bolted in favor of the Luge. We had seen exactly
one hour of skiing for the sixteen or so we had spent in service of the event.
Ouch. We shuttled back to Salt Lake to pick up the car (a process that took about
an hour and a half), then made fast time up Parley's Canyon to the Luge track
(thanks to a well-chosen Black
Flag soundtrack and some checkered-flag driving by yours truly) and arrived
shortly after the event began.
Where the Downhill
had been something of a limiting experience, what with the small segment we could
actually witness live, the Luge was downright abstract. Our tickets allowed us
to roam up and down the track but did not grant us seats in a grandstand. Wherever
we perched — and believe me, we tried just about everywhere along the track
— we were granted at best a second-long glimpse of each racer (all of them
interchangable personalities as far as we were concerned, unlike the skiers) amid
a 40-second run. But the sensation of speed we drew from watching these ladies
barrel down the track was impressive. And difficult to capture (see photo at right).
This day's event consisted of the first two of four runs for some 30 racers. A
trio of German women (Sylke Otto, Barbara Niedernhuber, and Silke Kraushaar, for
those of you scoring at home) dominated both the session and the following day's
event, sweeping
the medals.
Wednesday: K120
Ski Jumping Finals and Short Track Speed-Skating
The next morning's
event was one of our week's centerpieces: the Big Jump. We had watched the K90
event — the Small Jump — on TV over the weekend, and became drawn
to a few of the personalities, most notably Adam Malysz, a.k.a. The Polish Batman,
and Swiss prodigy Simon Ammann, who had stunned the field with an improbable victory.
Unlike most of our other events, we had grandstand seating for this one —
$190 a pop for a shared slab of frigid aluminum. My father had scored an extra
ticket to accompany us to this event, though his seat was in a different portion
of the grandstand. Braving bitter cold for the 8:30 AM start, we watched the 30-odd
skiers take one round of practice jumps (we got up at 6 AM and froze our nose-hairs
for... practice jumps? Hell, when in Rome...) before two scored ones.
This contest was
everything we could have hoped for, going right down to the final jumpers —
Malysz, Ammann, Finland's Matti Hautamaeki, and Germany's Sven Hannawald. Ammann,
as he had all week, uncorked a perfect
jump at the perfect moment, and the final jumper, Hannawald, while nearly
equalling him in distance (131 meters compared to Ammann's 133), could not hold
the landing and finished out
of the medals.
A sidelight to
our time at the Ski Jumping was the sudden bit of attention Nick received. As
a dual citizen of Austria and the U.S., he had taken it upon himself to cheer
for Austrians at every venue, even purchasing a large flag for $10 to show his,
um, patriotism. The flag caught the attnention of an Austrian TV crew, who interviewed
him (in English) between the second and third round. During that segment, Nick
was forced to admit that he didn't know much about his country's ski jumpers,
but he showed enough enthusiasm for the TV crew to return once the contest ended.
We're still
awaiting word on whether homeboy's props to aunts and uncles played on Austrian
TV.
Wednesday night,
somewhat rested, we went down to the Salt Lake Ice Center (a.k.a. the Delta Center,
home of the Utah Jazz) for some Short Track Speed Skating. Short Track is like
Roller Derby on ice, though it does add breathtaking moments of synchronized grace
as the skaters angle around the curves in unison. The evening's slate included
three events: the entirety of the Women's 1500 Meter race, and qualifiers for
the Men's 1000 Meter finals and the Men's 5000 Meter relay.
The Women's race
started with five heats, and each race lasted only about a minute, with the top
three racers advancing. They were then broken into three semifinal races, with
the top two racers advancing to the finals. Each stage of the Women's races alternated
with a stage in one of the Men's events. The stars of the Women's show were Asians,
a 15-year old Korean girl named Gi-Hyun Ko and two Chinese skaters, unrelated
but, improbably enough, with the same name. Yang Yang (A) and Yang Yang (S) were
instead distinguished by initials for their birth months, August and September.
Somewhat surprisngly, Gi-Hyun Ko won the Gold, beating out another Korean woman.
Yang Yang (A), holder of the 1000 Meter world record, had eased through the heats
but finished a distant fourth, and her namesake was disqualified for knocking
over a Canadian racer, who dusted herself off and finished 34 seconds behind the
rest of the pack. The two American hopefuls, including Amy
Peterson, the U.S.'s flag-bearer at the opening ceremonies, didn't fare very
well, both eliminated in their first race.
The Men's 1000
and the relay both featured America's rising star in the sport, Apolo Anton Ohno.
Ohno came into the Games hyped to win four Gold Medals, but also somewhat tainted
by a controversy
involving allegations of conspiracy in aiding a friend's making the team. Ohno
didn't race until the sixth of eight preliminary heats, but it didn't take long
to see why he was considered the class of the field. Short Track is all about
jockeying for position and holding it; the ability to get off a quick step and
then cut in front of another racer while avoiding contact is the key. Ohno's first
steps in making a move were nearly always devastating — like
watching Marshall Faulk cut back and lose an entire defense. In his preliminary
heat, the night's only stage in this event, he saved his best move for three-quarters
of the way through the race. Blowing past the second-place German skater as he
came out of a turn, he settled into second himself, qualifying for advancement.
A firestorm of
controversy would follow when the 1000 resumed three days later, but this night
ignited some sparks of its own in the Mens 5000 Meter Relay. The relay is a thing
to behold: each race consists of four teams of four racers, three of whom skate
in a circle in the middle of the track, following around whichever teammate is
racing in anticipation of the tag, which comes after about two laps. There's no
baton in this relay; the switch comes when the outgoing racer gives the incoming
one a shove forward to transfer momentum. Watching
the 12 skaters in the center (not to mention the refs) is every bit as mesmerizing
as watching the four actually in the race.
Ohno and the Americans
raced in the second of two semifinal heats on this night. They were running second
when Ohno made his move and took over first. But about two-thirds of the way into
the race's 45 laps, a Korean skater attempting to pass American Rusty Smith fell
down and crashed into the wall in spectacular fashion. As the Korean writhed around
in pain, the race was whistled to a stop, much to the crowd's displeasure. Adding
insult to injury, the Korean team was disqualified for impedance (the cardinal
sin in short-track), and the race had to be rerun from the start. The Americans
edged out the Italians, who were led by a long-haired pretty-boy named Fabio Carta.
By the end of the Games, Carta would make his displeasure at the American star
known: "We should use a rifle on Ohno."
Strange doings,
but fortunately no shots, followed Ohno and the rest of the sport around the Olympics.
When the 1000
resumed three days later, four skaters, including Ohno, fell just short of
the finish line. A lucky Austrialian at the back of the pack, Steven Bradbury,
skated home with the Gold. Though he opened a gash on his thigh with his own skates,
Ohno recovered from his fall with enough presence of mind to lunge over the finish
line for a Silver Medal. Not bitter in the least at losing his shot at four Golds,
he simply replied, "That's Short Track."
He won a medal
in the finals of his next race, after the Korean who had apparently beaten him,
Dong-Sung Kim, was disqualified for impedence. But he was deprived of further
medals thanks to a disqualificiation of his own in the 500 Meters and a Rusty
Smith fall during the Relays.
Thursday: Snowboarding
Giant Slalom Qualifiers and Medals Plaza
Thursday
morning took us back up to Park City for the Snowboarding Giant Slalom qualifiers.
Unlike the skiing, we could see the entirety of the course as the boarders wove
between the gates, though an overcast sky and occasional snow flurries cut down
the visibility. The women ran in the morning session, and we had something of
a personal stake: one of the American racers, Lisa Kosglow, was a schoolmate of
Andra's. With the top 16 qualifying for the finals on the next day, Kosglow made
it through in a very respectable 7th place. Defending gold medalist Karine Ruby
of France was the pace-setter until an Austrian woman (much to Nick's delight)
named Maria Kirchgasser-Pichler overtook her.
The Men's session
took place in the afternoon, as the skies parted just before race time, letting
in the sun but warming up the snow considerably. A Swiss boarder named Gilles
Jaquet set the pace, followed by Austrian Alexander Maier, the brother of the
great skier Herman Maeir, a.k.a. the Hermanator (noticeably absent from these
Games due to a motorcycle accident). American Chris Klug, who only 18 months ago
underwent a liver transplant, posted a seemingly lackluster time early, but it
held up and he made the cut — and took home a Bronze
Medal the next day.
Thursday night
was our one foray into the Medals Plaza, the downtown party of the Olympics. We
arrived late enough to miss most of the pre-medal festivities, though we did catch
some nameless local band's interminable massacre of a Creedence Clearwater Revival
medley. But these New Yorkers were delighted to find that Saturday Night Live's
Tracy Morgan would be the evening's host. Awwww yeah! SNAP! Morgan hammed
it up with an audience far bigger than his weekly studio one before yielding to
the Medals Ceremony proper.
The Medals stage
was an impressive contraption, a retractable half-dome of aluminum and translucent
glass called the Hoberman Arch, after its designer. The ceremony began with acrobats
silhouetted behind the colored glass as they descended down long streams of some
kind of fabric — an Olympian take on that scene from You Only Live Twice,
maybe. At some point, the dome retracted and the stage was revealed, with a three-dimensional
version of the ubiquitous Salt Lake 2002 snowflake logo behind the three-step
platform.
Among those presented
with medals that night were the winners of the Women's Luge, the Women's Combined
Skiing, and the Women's 1500 Meter Short Track. Unmasked, the lugers — all
three German women — revealed themselves to be quite the lookers, prompting
me to say something bright like, "There's your cover shot for German Luge-Babe
Weekly." This raised the hair on the necks of the Germans in front of us —
all of whom, even the women, had considerably hairy necks, I might add. The skier
featured a pair of familiar faces — Renate Goetschl (probably the only Austrian
athlete I favored more than my dual-citizen pal), and Janica Kostelic, the 20-year
old Croatian powerhouse who made a name for herself with three Golds and a Silver
in these Games. The Short-Trackers, at least the two Koreans, were noticeable
in their absence. We wondered aloud amongst ourselves whether the Men's Relay
mishap had anything to do with it, but their medals had actually been awarded
at the venue the night before while the crowd exited.
Friday: Men's
Hockey
Friday morning,
we got to we got to sleep past 8 AM for the first time all week. Our lone event
of the day was an 11 AM hockey game between Russia and Belarus — a good,
old-fashioned post-Soviet Union grudge match — at the E Center, a quaint
10,000 seat arena. Our seats were great: blue line, 18 rows up.
A caveat here:
my friends and I, while at least conversant with the rules of hockey and familiar
with its biggest stars, are by and large fair-weather hockey fans these days.
We've all seen much more hockey in the past; I used to attend Salt Lake Golden
Eagles games — the St. Louis Blues AAA team — back before the Utah Jazz
hit town. But we all found ourselves drawn to the international game, with its
faster pace, larger rinks, and especially the allowance of two-line passing. It's
only a slight stretch to say I watched more hockey during these Olympics than
in the entire past decade.
Belarus had played
three games to get through a qualifying round and into the Great Eight with the
big boys such as Canada, the U.S., Sweden, Czechoslovokia, Finland, and of course
the Russians. The Russians, by contrast, were playing their first game of the
tournament. They were well-stocked with NHL stars and solid veterans, including
Alexei Yashin, Sergei Fedorov, Pavel and Valeri Bure, Alexei Kovalev, Darius Kasparaitis,
Sergei Samsonov and goalie Nikolai Khabibulin. The Belarussians were no-names
by comparison, with only Ruslan Salei representing the NHL. The no-names dug themselves
a hole immediately, allowing a Samsonov goal 1:45 into the game as the Russians
displayed surprisingly crisp passing. But Belarus clawed its way back, scoring
at 8:20, and played most of the period at even strength with the Russians despite
being outshot 17-6. Russia broke through with two goals in the final 2:30 of the
period, one on a power-play and our prediction of a Russian shellacking and a
ten-goal slugfest seemed appropriate.
Even against a
new goaltender, Russia looked set to seal the game shut when Yashin scored at
5:16 in the second period. But again, Belarus clawed its way back, scoring about
90 seconds later on a power play and again seven minutes later. Incredibly, they
also pulled to nearly even in shots on goal. Issa, who was filming parts of the
game with his digital video camera (a frequent security-stopper but a worthwhile
companion to the Games), seemed to catch all of the Belarussian goals but none
of the Russians', so we pestered him to keep filming — like most of the crowd,
we fell firmly behind the underdogs even while marvelling at the fluid superiority
of the Russian team.
Any doubts about
the game's final
outcome were quickly quelled in the third period, as the Russians lit the
lamp twice in the first five minutes, including a Fedorov goal which put the game
at 6-3. Belarus tacked one on at the end to keep things close.
The two teams,
on opposite ends of their expected trajectories, eventually met in a rematch for
the Bronze Medal. The Russians had tied with the Americans the night after our
game and then lost an emotional rematch six days later — the 22nd anniversary
of the Miracle On Ice, as it turned out. The Belarussians, meanwhile, engineered
their own miracle, upsetting top-seeded Sweden in their first elimination game,
setting off a nationwide celebration back in their homeland. Despite their loss
to the Russians in the rematch, 7-2, they ended the tournament much more upbeat
than their former Soviet mates.
Nick, Issa, and
I were done for the day after the hockey game, but Andra, in the company of my
mother, had another event on tap: the Ice Dancing Compulsory Program. Apparently,
we men really missed a treat. The seats consisted of a row of folding chairs in
the absolute last row on a corner. According
to Andra, twenty-four pairs took turns skating THE EXACT SAME ROUTINE TO THE SAME
SONG. "I've Got Rhythm." Who
could ask for anything more, indeed?
Well, how about
the same 24 pairs doing the same routine to ANOTHER song? In discovering this
unexpected bounty, my mom reportedly turned to Andra and said, "I'm not sitting
through five hours of this. Are you?" To which Andra mercifullly responded,
"Hell no!"
Before they gave
up on the event, Andra and my mother did their best to understand the judges'
criteria. Their best guess was that the uglier the woman's costume and the longer
the man's hair, the better their score. Makes sense to me.
Saturday: Men's
Super G
Our final event
of the week, the Men's Super G skiing, required us to retrace our by-now well-worn
and weary steps from earlier in the week. The 5 AM wakeup, the obligatory first
joke of the day as we passed by a Howard Johnson's marquee advertising Olympic
Parking and $2 Hot Dogs on the way to the bus stop, the bus rides to Snowbasin,
the standing around for two hours ringing a cowbell to keep warm... while we weren't
jaded, we were certainly battle-hardened. Or at least a little warped — how
else to explain the enthusiastic consumption of jumbo hot dogs at 9 AM by our
entourage? I guess that HoJo marquee worked...
Issa had decided
the day before that he'd had enough Olympic revelry. For a chance to return to
the slopes of Snowbird, he sold his ticket to Andra's brother Adam, who was passing
through Salt Lake. Regular readers of this space (or at least the Hardt and Jaffe
families) may recall my tales of standing in a house where a man once wore the
official Bernie Brewer costume. This
Adam Hardt is the wearer of said costume.
Prepared for the
worst in ski goggles and a neoprene mask, Adam joined the salty veterans in staking
out a prime position right near the fence on the east side of the course. This
was the same course — called Grizzly, appropriately enough — on which
the men had run the Downhill six days before, albeit set up wth different gates.
Through the trees, we could glimpse the intermediate portion of the course before
the skiers briefly dipped out of sight. They reappeared at the top of the final
segment, the steepest portion of the course. Barrelling over what was called Buffalo
Jump, they had to zig a blind left turn and then zag a hard right onto Rendezvous
Face.
Norway's Kjetil
Andre Aamodt, who had won the Combined Gold Medal four days earlier, set the standard
from the third spot out of the gate. But the treacherous hairpin quickly got the
better of his peers, as three of the next six skiers failed to navigate the turn
and missed the following gate, disqualifying themselves. Among those was Aamodt's
countryman and best friend, Lasse Kjus, a five-time medalist by the end of the
Games.
Proving the notion
that even the smallest mistake could separate a medalist from an also-ran, seven
skiers came within one second of Aamodt's time, but none could top him. Three
Austrians, led by Stephan Eberharter, finished 2-3-4. Eberharter hit the medals
trifecta in these Games: Gold for Giant Slalom, a Silver for Super G and a Bronze
for Downhill. Still, he's got his work cut out if he aims to catch Aamodt, who
took
home his record seventh medal (dating back to the 1992 Super G in Calgary).
Golden-boy American
Darren Rahlves, who had won the Super G World Championship last year, finished
a disappointing eighth. But he provided some telling insight into the race, telling
reporters, "It's definitely the trickiest and toughest Super G course I've ever
skied on in my life because of the terrain and the way they set the course."
Part
3: Ringing It Out
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