The Winter Olympics that began here Saturday were to be a celebration of chilly sport in a country that has long had a warm spot in its heart for such activities.
One-third of Norway lies above the Arctic Circle. Its most popular active athlete, cross-country skier Vegard Ulvang, comes from that land of seemingly eternal winter, 1,400 miles north of Lillehammer.
Ulvang’s brother, Ketil, disappeared Oct. 13 while jogging near the family’s home in Kirkenes. For the next two weeks, triple gold medalist Vegard Ulvang and hundreds of friends from Kirkenes vainly searched the countryside, by then covered with snow.
The disappearance of Ketil Ulvang, an apparently isolated occurrence in the Norwegian wilderness, turned out to be the first of a series of tragedies, accidents and bizarre incidents that have dimmed the Olympic flame even before it was lit Saturday at the Lysgardsbakkene Ski Jumping Arena.
Even the final steps toward Crown Prince Haakon’s lighting the cauldron that will burn until Feb. 27 were not spared from these unusual circumstances.
Ole Gunnar Fidjestol, who was to bear the Olympic torch into the arena by leaping from the large jumping hill, was knocked unconscious after a fall during Thursday practice of the dramatic torch leap. He tossed the smoking torch aside seconds before pitching headfirst into the snow after a seemingly safe landing.
Fidjestol suffered no serious injury, but he will miss out on a moment for which he had trained several months.
So, sadly, will downhill skier Ulrike Maier of Austria, who died in a crash during a race two weeks ago; U.S. ice dancer Elizabeth Punsalan, whose father, Ernesto, allegedly was murdered by his son a week ago; Norwegian ski coach Ales Gartner, who died of a heart attack in December at age 45; and hundreds of Sarajevans, killed in the conflict that has destroyed the city and the legacy of the 1984 Winter Olympics.
“I read that with the wood from the (skating) arena they are building coffins and burying people,” said 1988 Olympic champion Brian Boitano, whose first of three Olympics was in Sarajevo. “It is hard to believe that a city can go from hosting the Olympics to what it is going through now.”
The ghosts of Sarajevo are among the things haunting these 17th Winter Olympics, games in which the desire to succeed may have killed fair play, games in which athletes try to play while their relatives fight for their lives, games in which courage already has been measured far from the slopes and rinks and sled runs.
U.S. speedskater Kristen Talbot risked missing the Olympics after donating bone marrow Jan. 10 to her brother Jason, who risked death from aplastic anemia. Kristen will skate, and Jason should be able to watch on television.
U.S. luger Duncan Kennedy risked serious injury when he intervened to protect teammate Robert Pipkens from an Oct. 29 attack by Neo-Nazi skinheads in Oberhof, Germany. Kennedy will be a medal contender here, while two of the attackers against whom he testified are in jail.
Talbot, Kennedy and the 155 other members of the U.S. Olympic team have been overshadowed for a month by the compelling soap opera that features figure skaters Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding. On the day before the opening ceremonies, in a courtroom nine time zones west of Lillehammer, legal battles over Harding’s Olympic status were diverting the attention of the U.S. media.
Kerrigan’s first pre-Olympic practice drew more coverage in America than many of the sporting events will get. Some reporters who covered the practice were bemused to hear Kerrigan complain of being followed everywhere while she was posing for major magazine covers, agreeing to host “Saturday Night Live” and weighing multimillion-dollar offers to movie rights of her life story.
Did Harding help plan the Jan. 6 assault on Kerrigan, which left her with a sore knee and a healthy bank balance? Did Harding lie about covering up? Did Harding kidnap the Lindbergh baby? It has gotten to the point where no question and answer about the 23-year-old U.S. champion from Portland, Ore., seems too farfetched.
“This one incident is enough to eclipse all of the bad incidents (in Olympic history) in terms of press coverage,” said former Olympic biathlete John Ruger, chairman of the U.S. Olympic Committee’s Athletes Advisory Committee.
“I hope we aren’t at a point where this is the dominant story throughout the Games. The Olympics are about hope and promise and fulfilling your goals. Those are the things we should focus on.”
While most foreign athletes are aware of the Harding story, which has received widespread coverage in western Europe and Japan, they see it through jaundiced eyes.
“The comment I hear from most of them is, unfortunately, `That’s the States,’ ” Ruger said.
There will be 1,902 athletes from a record 66 nations competing at sites in or near the three Olympic venue cities of Lillehammer, Hamar and Gjovik. That breaks the record of 64 nations set two years ago in Albertville.
The final count represents both the addition of nine nations that in 1992 were part of the Unified Team of former Soviet Republics and the subtraction of several countries whose athletes no longer meet tightened Olympic competitive standards. A half-dozen tropical countries that sent ersatz sledders and skiers are not represented here.
The first Olympic event is a Saturday hockey game between the newly minted Czech Republic and Finland that faces off four hours before the opening ceremonies. The highlight of the first weekend’s action is the men’s downhill Sunday.
Skiing’s Olympic glamor event will get even more attention because of Maier’s death on the downhill course at Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany. The race manager of the course here on Kvitfjell mountain called it “probably the best secured downhill course in the world.”
Defending Olympic champion Patrick Ortlieb of Austria told an Austrian weekly news magazine after Maier’s death that fans have a fatal attraction to ski racing.
“They want to have a coward,” Ortlieb was quoted. “And sometimes the people need someone who dies, so they have a hero.”
Vegard Ulvang, an adventurer as well as a ski star, said long before his brother disappeared that Ketil Ulvang was his hero. When Vegard was asked at a Thursday press conference about when he would look again for his brother, he started to sob.
“In the springtime, when the snow is gone, I will go and try to find him,” Vegard Ulvang said.
In Norway, where winter is a joy, where having the Winter Olympics is just a extension of annual rhythms, the melting snow may bring new rivers of sadness.
