In a bizarre finish with skaters strewn all over the ice and 15,424 fans booing at the Salt Lake Ice Arena, Apolo Anton Ohno claimed a silver medal Saturday night by crawling across the finish line of the men’s 1,000-meter short-track speedskating race.
The last man standing in the five-man final, Steven Bradbury of Australia, won the gold medal, coming from last place in the stretch when everyone else hit the deck, for his country’s first-ever Winter Olympics win. The scene resembled a multiple-car pileup on an interstate highway.
Ohno, who suffered a cut requiring six stitches on the inner thigh of his left leg, was using crutches afterward but said he hoped to be back on the ice Sunday and competing Wednesday in the 1,500. He said he was still unsure what transpired but is not bitter because that is the nature of the rough-and-tumble sport.
“I could feel the win in my fingers and next thing you know, I’m in the boards,” Ohno said. “But that’s short-track.”
Stranger yet, Bradbury, 28, a four-time Olympian, whose strategy was traveling in the rear, is the manufacturer of Ohno’s skates. Only the night before he had sent Ohno an e-mail asking him to mention his company if Ohno won a medal.
Bradbury has had enough bad luck on the ice to fill an adventure novel. He once suffered an 111-stitch cut in his leg while leading a World Cup final, losing four liters of blood, and broke his neck in two places in September 2000 in another racing accident. This time he was the beneficiary of on-ice oddity.
The big crash played out in front of him. He thought, “Hang on, this can’t be right. I can’t believe this. My God, I’ve won.”
On the ninth and last lap on the 111-meter track, Ohno was taken down by Korean Hyun-Soo Ahn. Ohno crashed into the boards, desperately tried to climb back to his feet, stumbled and sprawled across the finish line in second.
Jianjun Li of China was disqualified for starting the whole mess, Ahn didn’t get up fast enough, and Canada’s Mathieu Turcotte nabbed bronze by sliding as Bradbury sidestepped all of the damage and skated across unmolested.
“I think the race was definitely a little crazy in the end,” said Ohno, 19, of Seattle. “I have never, ever been in a race like that. I thought my performance was one of the best performances of my life.”
Bradbury said when he saw the carnage he was sure the final would be rerun. Ohno said he probably wouldn’t have been able to do it because of his injury.
“I thought I was ready for anything,” Ohno said. “But when someone falls in front of you and falls into you, there’s not a lot you can do.”
Ohno had warned that he would have to be wearing a golden horseshoe to sweep the 2002 Winter Games’ four medals.
Spectators roared for Ohno from his first appearance Saturday. There was no fallout from the controversy stemming from the U.S. trials. It was alleged after that event that Ohno helped fix a race to benefit a friend, but he was later exonerated.
Rusty Smith, 22, of Sunset Beach, Calif., was the other American in the men’s 1,000. He was eliminated in the quarterfinal.
In a less controversial final, Yang A. Yang of China won gold in the women’s 500, with Evgenia Radnova of Bulgaria taking silver and Chunlu Wang of China earning bronze. Caroline Hallisey of Natick, Mass., made the final but was last. The U.S. women’s 3,000-meter relay team was ousted in the semifinals.
Amy Peterson, 30, of Maplewood, Minn., a five-time Olympian who carried the American flag during the Opening Ceremony, was eliminated in the quarterfinals of the women’s 500.
