Apolo Anton Ohno created the buzz, but Rusty Smith took home the bronze. Gold, silver or collision, Ohno is the lightning rod of the 2002 Winter Games short-track speedskating. After crashes and disqualifications, just what could he do for an encore Saturday night?
An approximation of a football straight arm, it turned out. Fighting for position on the last lap of the 4 1/2-lap men’s 500-meter semifinal, Ohno shoved Japanese skater Satoru Terao into the boards and was disqualified. The situation merely added to the litany of peculiar developments in Ohno’s races and it didn’t hurt the chances of Smith, 22, of Sunset Beach, Calif., who had been ill all week and not skating up to par.
The illegal move eliminated Ohno’s chance of claiming his third individual medal of the 2002 Olympics. Ohno, 19, of Seattle, was taken down by a tackle and crawled across the finish line for a silver medal in the 1,000 last Saturday. He was cut off near the finish but earned gold in the 1,500 when South Korean Kim Dong Sung was disqualified Wednesday.
In a volatile sport in which contact is normal and crashes frequent, Ohno started in the coveted first lane but immediately fell behind and then ran out of luck and speed.
“I tried to set up the Japanese skater on the inside,” Ohno said. “I tried to hold the track and ran out of room. I knew I had a little downfall after my start.”
It was Smith electrifying the Salt Lake Ice Center crowd of more than 15,000 fans in the final. He burst from the starting line and opened daylight but couldn’t hold on wire-to-wire. Canadians Marc Gagnon, a four-time world champion, won gold in an Olympic-record time of 41.802 seconds and teammate Jonathan Guilmette earned silver, passing Smith in the last half-lap.
“It’s a great feeling right now, to go out and skate and get a bronze medal,” Smith said. “Bringing it home for the United States. With everything going on right now, it’s great to be an American.”
Ohno, Smith, Ron Biondo of Broadview Heights, Ohio, and Dan Weinstein of Brookline, Mass., combined in the 5,000-meter relay that covered 45 laps of the 111-meter track. An early tumble took the defending world champion U.S. out of medal contention.
Chinese women with the same name won two of the medals in the women’s 1,000. The skater known by Yang Yang (A) took gold, while Yang Yang (S) won bronze. South Korean Ko Gi Hyun was the silver-medal winner.
The circus-like action of short track was established early in Saturday’s racing. There were three crashes and a festival of false starts in the heats. Skaters cruised the opening laps of longer events but exploded off the starting line for the 500. A few days ago, Ohno said the six-stitch cut he suffered in the 1,000 last week might be a factor in this race. However, he showed no ill effects in his heat or quarterfinal.
Some notable skaters were eliminated early. Japan’s Takafumi Nishitani, the defending Olympic champion who broke his ankle two months ago and has pins holding it together, went out in a quarterfinal. China’s Jiajun Li, the silver-medal winner in the 1,000, fell in his quarterfinal. Ganbat Jargalanchuluun of Mongolia–at 15 years 225 days the youngest athlete in these Games and also the athlete with the longest last name–competed in the 500 but did not advance from his heat.
Earlier in the day, the Court of Arbitration for Sport rejected the South Korean appeal seeking to overrule the official who disqualified Kim in Wednesday’s race. Previously, race officials and the International Skating Union turned down South Korean appeals.
Although Ohno said he is not perturbed by the strong reaction to his skating, including the outpouring of e-mail protests to the U.S. Olympic Committee from South Korea, they did lead to increased security for the star skater and the American team.
Since winning his medals in such a flamboyant manner, Ohno has received star treatment too. Fans swarm him to the point he can no longer eat in public, and he said he has enjoyed meeting such luminaries as President Bush, cyclist Lance Armstrong, baseball star Cal Ripken Jr., and figure skating star Katarina Witt.
“Everyone I talked to loves the sport,” Ohno said.
And it is a sport that leaves them talking.
