SLALOM: Miller hurts hopes while playing basketball
Sestriere, Italy – The odds are stacked higher than ever against Bode Miller in the final men’s alpine race of the Olympics, the slalom Saturday. Miller twisted an ankle playing basketball with teammates Tuesday, and his coaches kept it secret until Wednesday.
“It’s a minor ankle strain,” U.S. men’s head coach Phil McNichol said Wednesday. “He’s good to go. That’s what I’m getting from our physical therapist.”
Miller’s injury is serious enough, however, that he will undergo therapy today as his teammate Ted Ligety, the gold medalist in the men’s combined last week, trains for the slalom.
Miller came into the Turin Games as a medal contender in all five alpine disciplines, but bad luck and missed opportunities have left him empty-handed.
His absence from the podium reflects the disappointing performance of the U.S. Ski Team in general. But while the team’s coaches and administrators are in a funk, Miller is not depressed, said Robbie Kristan, who tunes Miller’s slalom skis and has been a confidant for years.
Kristan said Miller was upbeat, as willfully alienated from the concern about medal counts as he always has been.
“I think his head right now is totally in the right place, and he wants to win the slalom,” Kristan said. “I know that. I know that really well.”
Miller will start somewhere around 16th or 17th in the slalom, based on world rankings.
SPEEDSKATING: Gold medalist Davis suing Chicago for profiling
Olympic gold medalist Shani Davis is one of four plaintiffs suing the city of Chicago and former police superintendent Terry Hillard, claiming they were stopped and searched for illegal weapons because of their skin color.
Davis, Quincy Joyner and Damien Joyner filed a lawsuit March 24, 2003. A fourth plaintiff, Damane Grier, was added to the lawsuit a few months later. All four are black.
Harvey Grossman, the director of American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, said an inordinate number of blacks and Latinos are stopped on the street and searched for illegal weapons, and the organization wants police to document stops.
According to the lawsuit, Davis was searched in March 2001 while walking along West Howard Street near his home on Chicago’s far north side. He stood spread eagle against a wall while an officer searched his pants and pockets with a flashlight, pulling Davis’ underwear away from his body.
Two years earlier, while on his way to a video arcade with friends, he was searched near the elevated train stop on West Belmont Avenue on the north side.
In each instance, there was no “warrant, probable cause, reasonable suspicion, consent, or any other lawful basis” for the search, and no illegal weapons were found, according to the lawsuit.
DOPING: Banned Austrian coach tried to commit suicide
The disgraced Austrian ski coach who ignited a doping scandal at the Turin Games insisted he had no medical equipment and said he was so “shattered” by the episode that he tried to kill himself by crashing into a police roadblock.
“I was completely shattered, I couldn’t think clearly. When something like that happens to you, you are in an extraordinary mental situation. I wanted to take my own life, because my world had been destroyed. I wanted to end my life with the car,” Mayer said.
Mayer’s presence among Austria’s biathletes and cross country skiers at the Olympics set off police raids and intense scrutiny from the International Olympic Committee.
But Mayer – banned from the Olympics for links to blood doping in 2002 – insisted he was on a personal trip to watch his team compete in the Olympics.
Meanwhile, the Olympic drug-testing lab was still analyzing samples taken from 10 Austrian biathletes and cross country skiers in last weekend’s raids on athletes’ housing. IOC spokeswoman Giselle Davies said the results should be known by Sunday.
SHORT TRACK: Ohno safely advances to 500 quarterfinals
Turin – Apolo Anton Ohno had a short night at the short track. It was good enough to give him a shot at another medal.
Ohno safely advanced from his heat in the 500 meters Wednesday and will go to the final night of competition with two chances to add to the bronze he won at these Games.
Even though he was heavily favored to move on, Ohno didn’t take anything for granted in the shortest of short track events. Forty-three seconds after the gun went off, he was done for the night. It was his only race.
“It’s my last week of the Games and it’s been a long time since I enjoyed a 500 meters like that,” he said.
Ohno, who has the only American short track medal of these Games, moved on to the quarterfinals of the 500 on Saturday night. He’s also part of the 5,000 relay team, which qualified for the final.
Ohno was third off the starting line, but he dipped inside coming off a turn to get past two skaters with less than two laps to go. He crossed the line comfortably ahead of Italy’s Roberto Serra.
While clearly the most accomplished of the four skaters in his heat, Ohno was wary of Serra and Japan’s Takafumi Nishitani, the 500 gold medalist at Nagano in 1998.
“Every country has a good 500-meter skater, so everybody has a good start,” Ohno said. “It’s all about explosiveness.”
Another U.S. skater, Anthony Lobello, crashed out of his 500 heat. The first-time Olympian from Tallahassee, Fla., was in second place when he got low coming through the turn, only to lose his edge and slam into the boards.
“I was on line and the ice broke out,” Lobello said, meaning it cracked in a soft spot. “There’s not anything I can do about it when the ice breaks out.”
Meanwhile, South Korea picked up its fourth short track gold of the Games, while Canada claimed the silver in the women’s 3,000 relay. Italy received the bronze when China was disqualified for impeding in a turn.
In the women’s 1,000, both U.S. skaters safely advanced from their heats. Halie Kim was first in her race, while Kimberly Derrick passed a Japanese skater on the final lap for a second-place finish and a spot in Saturday’s quarterfinals.
CURLING: Canada, Finland rock on
Pinerolo, Italy – The best Pete Fenson can hope for now is to leave Italy with a bronze medal and some new pizza recipes.
The Minnesota pizzeria owner couldn’t lead the Americans to the Olympic gold-medal game, losing to Canada 11-5 in the men’s curling semifinals Wednesday night. Canada will play Finland for the gold; the United States will play Britain for the bronze. That would be the first Olympic curling medal for the United States.
“A medal of any color is good,” said Fenson, the team’s skip. “That definitely would help us get over it. I’m sure a victory on Friday would make us feel a little bit better.”
But a loss in the consolation game and they’re going home empty-handed – extending the shutout for the Americans.
“We want to end this Olympic run with something around our neck,” U.S. lead John Shuster said.
Finnish skip Markku Uusipaavalniemi used the big last-rock advantage called the hammer to score on the game’s final throw and beat the British 4-3.
The Canadians finished off the U.S. with a whopping five points in the ninth end – one short of the Olympic record – when the Americans, forced to play from behind, had to take chances. The U.S. players quickly conceded the match.
“We kind of put the game on the line going into that end,” vice-skip Shawn Rojeski said. “We were either going to steal a point and be tied coming home, or give them the game there in the ninth. … We tried it and it obviously backfired on us.”
