Apolo Anton Ohno created the buzz, but Rusty Smith took home the bronze. Gold, silver or collision, Ohno has been the lightning rod of short-track speedskating in the 2002 Winter Games. 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 Salt Lake Olympics. Ohno was taken down by a tackle and crawled across the finish line for a silver medal in the 1,000 Feb. 16. He then 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, who immediately fell behind, ran out of luck and speed.
“I tried to set up the Japanese skater on the inside,” said Ohno, who had no beef with his disqualification. “I tried to hold the track and ran out of room. I knew I had a little downfall after my start.”
Smith, who was coughing and stuffed up afterward, electrified 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. Canadians Marc Gagnon, four-time world champion, won gold in an Olympic record time of 41.802 seconds, and Jonathan Guilmette earned silver, both passing Smith in the last half-lap.
“I had an incredible start,” Smith said. “It’s just a long time to be in the lead. I’m so excited. With everything going on right now, it’s great to be an American.”
Gagnon, 26, who nearly retired in 1998, motivated himself to skate one more Olympics. “You have to find a dream to work for, and I did,” Gagnon said.
Ohno, Smith, Ron Biondo of Broadview Heights, Ohio, and Dan Weinstein of Brookline, Mass., combined in the 5,000-meter relay, which covered 45 laps of the 111-meter track and featured three of four teams falling. A Smith tumble when he lifted his skate over a lane marker took the defending world champion U.S. out of the medals. Canada stayed upright and won gold, with Italy second and China third.
“It’s hard to have a really good moment and a really bad moment back-to-back,” Smith said.
Ohno said he’s sure the U.S. would have had a medal without the fall. Instead of a possible four gold medals, Ohno ended the Olympics with one gold and one silver. “This is my first Games and I have two medals,” he said. “There’s nothing better than that.”
Unrelated 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) captured 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 with three crashes and a festival of false starts in the heats. Ohno worried the six-stitch cut he had sustained in the 1,000 might be a factor, but he showed no ill effects in his heat or quarterfinal.
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.
Earlier Saturday, 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.
Ohno said he is not perturbed by anger over his skating, including the outpouring of e-mail protests to the U.S. Olympic Committee from South Korea, that led to increased security for the star skater and the American team.
Ohno has been treated like a star, meeting President Bush, cyclist Lance Armstrong, baseball star Cal Ripken Jr. and figure skater Katarina Witt.
“Everyone I talked to loves the sport,” Ohno said.
And it is a sport that leaves them talking.
