VANCOUVER — In 1984, Mark Grimmette was startled to find bulldozers ripping into the side of his favorite sledding hill. Turns out, a luge track was being built. Grimmette went out and helped the crew finish the job.
That was the first step along a path that would bring him to five Olympics as a doubles luge competitor, plus the honor of being the U.S. flagbearer for tonight’s opening ceremony of the Vancouver Games.
“The term ‘elder statesman’ came up a lot,” the 39-year-old Grimmette said Thursday, when describing the voting process for the flagbearer role. “I just hope it wasn’t ‘elderly’ they were saying.”
It’ll be the second time Grimmette, of Muskegon, Mich., and Lake Placid, N.Y., plays a starring role in an opening ceremony. He was one of eight U.S. athletes selected to carry a tattered flag pulled from the rubble of the World Trade Center into the Salt Lake City Olympics, five months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Grimmette has spent most of his career with Brian Martin, teaming with him to win bronze at the Nagano Games in 1998 and silver at the Salt Lake City Games in 2002. They needed to beat another American sled in a race-off just to secure a spot in the field for the Vancouver Games.
Russian hockey player cited for doping.
A female Russian hockey player was reprimanded but escaped a ban after testing positive for a stimulant in the first doping violation of the Games.
The International Olympic Committee said Svetlana Terenteva tested positive Saturday for a “light stimulant” contained in a prescription cold medication. The 26-year-old forward told the IOC she used the drug Rhino-fluimucil in Russia to treat a cold last month.
World Anti-Doping Agency president John Fahey said more than 30 athletes had been excluded from coming to Vancouver for breaking doping rules in recent months. He declined to give other details.
Cook crashes during training.
Stacey Cook was released from a clinic with pain and stiffness but no major injuries hours after crashing during the opening women’s Olympic downhill training run.
“Not the ideal way to start the Olympics,” Cook said.
Cook, a 25-year-old skier from Mammoth Lakes, Calif., had trouble landing a jump on the upper section of the course and shifted her weight backward. She slammed into the safety netting at full speed but managed to get up and stand under her own power.
Cook’s neck, back, left leg above the knee and hip flexor “are all really sore,” she said, “but it’s all muscle — like, everything’s OK — and I can live through that.”
