Thursday, Rotten Thursday

Since we last convened, our neighbors to the north put on a skating clinic at the final World Championship speedskating event before the Olympics, in the venue where the sport was conducted with spectacular, Olympian flair in 1994.

On Thursday, however, everything was pushed into the background. For the American women's long-track team, razor-thin as it is now, suffered what could be a disastrous hit. And the U.S. short track men's team controversy turned eight different shades of nasty that same day

Chris Witty, 26, the standard-bearer of U.S. women's speedskating on the sprint distances since Bonnie Blair's retirement in 1995, is suffering from mononucleosis, it was revealed to her that evening. It necessitated her immediate withdrawal the following day from the World Sprint Championships. Blood tests revealed in November that she had anemia, which probably contributed to her not finishing any higher than fourth on any world cup race this season, especially her signature distance, the 1,000 meters.

Witty is putting up a brave front, saying she will be in the thick of things when the women's 500 in Salt Lake City begins to be contested on February 13 and she will recover. But when you hear her coach, Tom Cushman, when asked how she'll make it back at anything resembling full strength (since recovery from that infection, caused by the Epstein-Barr virus takes up to a year)replied, "She doesn't have a year; she has four weeks," its tone betrays the desperation of the situation. You have to wonder if this is one barrier that even the iron-willed Wisconsin native may not be able to overcome.

Bottom line -- winning any medal is secondary now; getting healthy is. No matter how long it takes. The most heartfelt optimist would say Witty's chances of even competing in Kearns, Utah next month at the Winter Olympics are less than 50-50. And should that come to pass, Jennifer Rodriguez would be all that stands between continued success, and the possible end of a four-Olympics length streak of women long track medallists.

But it's been that way for years. Blair was "The Franchise" in three Olympics and only her. Witty was the go-to girl in Nagano and only her. Now we'll see if the women's long-track team can close ranks and draw strength from this adversity.

The news overshadowed a week from the nether regions for U.S. short track skating. An arbitrator rejected U.S. Speedskating's request to deny a hearing for Tom O'Hare, the skater who wound up being bounced from the top 6 at the Olympic Trials last month due to the controversial victory of Shani Davis on the 1,000 meters, the final event of them. It will take place over a two-day period beginning Tuesday in Colorado Springs. A decision must be rendered by a week from Monday, January 28, as that is the final day national team rosters must be submitted by all participating countries in Salt Lake City, in all winter sports disciplines to be contested then, to the International Olympic Committee.

The problem is that there are five skaters and over two dozen witnesses who will tell the arbitrator their version of what happened on December 22, the day of the men's 1,000 final. The arbitrator then will have three possible courses of action to take. He can find O'Hare's version of events credible and kick Apolo Ohno and Rusty Smith off the team and reinstate O'Hare. He also can say there was no impropriety and the result stands, or he can order a skate-off between the parties in question.

Another sticky wicket exploded Thursday, when Smith filed a defamation of character lawsuit against O'Hare, saying the allegations leveled against Smith have wrecked his reputation. The suit seeks unspecified monetary damages.

The decision to allow a hearing hinged upon how the arbitrator interpreted a section of the U.S. Olympic Committee constitution which ironically one of O'Hare's attorneys himself rewrote a year ago. That was after two disputes that went to arbitration last year, one of which involved Witty's attempt to make the Olympic cycling team for the Sydney Summer Olympics. The section in question mandated that complaints regarding "field of play" issues -- matters "within the discretion of the referee" -- are ineligible for arbitration. Ohno and Smith's attorneys argued unsuccessfully the issue is dead, since even though the chief referee said four days later he had no doubt "the fix was in," he didn't stop the race in midstream or call a foul on either skater.

O'Hare's attorneys, according to the Salt Lake Tribune, "have obtained credible evidence of the alleged conspiracy through interviews with people who told them they heard talk of the plan before and after the disputed race. And they maintain that fomenting a plot -- however, invisibly it might have been executed on the ice -, violates the USOC code of conduct, meaning the 'field of play' exception to an athlete's right to arbitration does not apply." They said the race referee filed a special report with U.S. Speedskating after the race, saying he felt "powerless" because he could not spot any obvious infractions, yet felt that Ohno was violating the USOC code of conduct by not trying to win, and claimed USS had that report "for weeks."

Either way, whatever is decided by Wednesday will be taken by the losing side as a call to arms and then there could be legal action, as in a state or federal court deciding the issue. No matter what happens, this isn't over. Far farther and farthest from it.

The news overshadowed the World Sprints, contested in Hamar, Norway's Vikingship oval. With Rodriguez opting to concentrate on training for the Olympics, no American woman finished in the top 16 of the first race, the 500 meters, won by Catriona Lemay Doan, who will be Canada's flag-bearer next month at the Opening Ceremony at Salt Lake City. Svetlana Zhurova, the Russian Rocket, was second, and Germany's Monique Garbrecht-Enfeldt began the defense of her title quite nicely in third. Andrea Nuyt, the Dutch's top sprinter, was fourth, while Belarus' Anzhelika Kotyuga continued her dream season with a most impressive fifth. Amy Sannes, Elli Ochowicz and Becky Sundstrom finished in 17th, 18th and 19th, respectively.

The danger here is that if any country's skater slips below the radar of the top 20, you risk losing a start position at next year's Sprints, scheduled for Nagano, Japan. And the American women didn't get off on the most stable of feet.

The men's 500 was next. The early line indicated that it would be a North American battle between training partners at the Calgary Olympic Oval, and it didn't disappoint. Jeremy Wotherspoon eked out a .19 victory over Casey Fitzrandolph for the victory. But others who don't call our continent home tried to crash the coronation.

Jan Bos, 1998 World Sprints champion was just .03 behind Fitzrandolph for third, with Hiroyasu Shimizu, defending Olympic and World Single Distance champion on the 500, was fourth, and Korean Kyu-Hyuk Lee was fifth. Joe Cheek finished sixth, Kip Carpenter 11th and Nick Pearson ended his first race in a three-way tie for 31st out of 42 skaters.

The kilometer races provided rim-rattling shockers galore. The most noted of which was the victory of Kotyuga on the women's race, the first medal in world sprints competition for the former Soviet republic in nearly a decade, and the first medal ever won by a Belarusian female speedskater. Nuyt set herself up for a run at Garbrecht's crown with her second place finish, with Lemay Doan finally putting a good 1,000m together at a Sprints event for third. The 1998 World Junior champion Aki Tonoike of Japan was fourth, and Garbrecht-Enfeldt, in her first kilometer race in nearly six weeks, was fifth. The American women did a little better here, with Sannes' sixth the top showing. Yet Sundstrom was 13th, and Ochowicz was tied for 21st.

After the first day's set of races, Lemay Doan was on top of the table with a .3 lead over Nuyt going into Sunday's final two races, with Garbrecht just .02 behind them. Kotyuga's victory pushed her past Zhurova for fourth overall, at a .37 deficit from No. 1. Sannes was 10th, Sundstrom 15th, and Ochowicz on the bubble at 19th.

As the 1,000 began, the important thing for the leaders was to build momentum so they could stay right where they're at for Sunday's finale. But Fitzrandolph didn't have as good a 1,000 as he did his 500 and came in 10th on that race. Wotherspoon went two for two on the top of the podium, with Dutch veteran Gerard van Velde the surprising runner-up, and the home side's Adne Sondral third. Mike Ireland, last year's champion rebounded from a subpar ninth place showing on the 500 for fourth this time, and Carpenter, shockingly, upstaged both Fitz and Cheek, the top American in fifth. Pearson was ninth, Cheek 11th.

So Wotherspoon was clearly in the catbird's seat after day one, with a yawning .54 second gap on van Velde (7th on the 500), who was able to leapfrog Fitzrandolph, Lee and Bos. Ireland's showing on the 1,000 moved him into third overall, .65 out of the lead with Fitzrandolph fourth (.67 in arrears) and Lee (.71 behind), .02 and .06 out of the bronze medal position. Carpenter and Cheek finished in eighth and ninth, and Pearson was in the hotseat, right on that dreaded 20th spot.

Day two of the Sprints began like all second days of this championship go -- with the final pairing a direct battle between #1 and #2 on each 500 and 1,000. Lemay Daon went heads-up with Nuyt, and won her 18th 500 out of the last 19 times she's raced the distance, with the amazing Kotyuga staved off Garbrecht-Enfeldt for third. Volker rounded out the top 5. No American women in the top 15, with Ochowicz (16th), Sannes (18th) and Sundstrom (19th). By now, Lemay Doan had such a lead on Nuyt that all she had to do was pretty much stay vertical in her final 1,000 to clinch her second career Sprints crown and to stop Garbrecht-Enfeldt's streak at three. She held a 1.02 second lead over Nuyt, 1.43 over Kotyuga, who bumped up her own lead on the defending champion to .07 ahead. Volker was 2.15 seconds back.

Shimizu confirmed he would be right in the mix next month of his signature race by winning the second day's men's 500, with Fitzrandolph ahead of Wotherspoon, gaining 16/100ths of a second on the overall leader. Ireland and van Velde were fourth and fifth. Cheek tied Carpenter for ninth, and Peason finished a slow 27th. Still, the 'Spoon had a 1.02 second lead over Fitzrandolph going into the 1,000m last event of the competition. Ireland and van Velde were tied for third overall, 1.34 seconds out of the lead, while Lee was 1.8 seconds back in fifth.

So Lemay Doan would face off with Nuyt again in the 1,000m finale, but everything below her in the overall classification could change. Kotyuga skated after Garbrecht, and didn't lose one-one-hundredth of time, tying Garbrecht-Enfeldt for third. Lemay Doan and Nuyt closed out the women's competition and the Canadian, even though she didn't win the race (Volker did) she wound up with silver, winning by an additional .43 over Nuyt to clinch her second title in five years. Nuyt won the overall silver, and Kotyuga won for Belarus its first world championship medal since 1993 and its first for a woman. Some pride was salvaged as Sannes skated to the highest finish of her career, fourth on the 1,000; she wound up ninth overall. The underachieving Sundstrom and Ochowicz were well back in the pack, 16th and 18th on the last 1,000, 17th and 18th overall. Neither did anything special to spark any hope of Olympic top 10 success.

Much would still be decided on the men's side, especially the positions below Wotherspoon. Of those three, Fitzrandolph would have the advantage since he skated in the final pair against his training partner. Van Velde and Ireland would skate in the next to last pair. Ireland beats van Velde by 2/10ths of a second, which was more than enough to guarantee him at least a bronze. Wotherspoon defeated Fitzrandolph to end it and to ensure his third world sprint title in the past four years, and Canada's fourth straight trip to the top of the medal stand. Van Velde and Erben Wennemars of the Netherlands rounded out the top 5. In the 1,000 itself, Cheek and Carpenter were 8th and 10th, Pearson finished 12th. Overall, it was a draw, as both tied for seventh. Pearson was 21st, so the Americans may lose a men's start position for next year's championships. That remains to be seen.

Bonnie Blair. Picabo Street. Between them, they've won eight Olympic medals, six of them gold.

One got screwed out of lighting the Olympic flame in Rice-Eccles Stadium in Salt Lake City on February 8; the other is campaigning to carry the U.S. flag into the stadium. One issue is resolved; the other is still to come.

Blair should have lit the Olympic flame next month, but can't do so since she was already in the Olympic Torch relay at Milwaukee a couple weeks ago. It would have been a great way for the USOC to thank her for serving her country on the international sporting scene as honorably and as successfully as she did as a speedskater. She always got the short end of the publicity stick, it seemed. After all, her fifth career gold medal occurred on the same day of the Nancy Kerrigan-Tonya Harding freak show, which was called the opening of the women's figure skating competition. She retired from the sport on March 18, 1995, her birthday.

The only problem was that was the day Michael Jordan announced his return to the NBA from his abysmal minor league baseball sabbatical, a stint some conspiracy theorists have claimed to this day reeked of being bogus, a smokescreen for the NBA to let him leave the sport "voluntarily" instead of being kicked out due to damaging gambling allegations at the time of his "retirement," and that the only reason Jordan came back in 1995 was that the league, which had come under severe criticism of how it handled the cocaine-related death of Reggie Lewis of the Boston Celtics, asked him to return so the aftermath of Lewis' death would be pushed to the background.

It would have been, in the month of the valentine, a fitting and sweet valentine to one of the greatest winter sports athletes this nation has ever produced. Blair's longevity in her sport, even though she didn't win five gold medals in nine days like Eric Heiden did in 1980, makes up for the fact that Heiden quit the sport that same year and never competed in another Games afterward. Both are great ambassadors of the sport. It just would have been nice for the USOC to give her its highest honor in an Olympic year.

Yes, even higher an honor than carrying your country's flag as the host nation into the Opening Ceremony. That slot has not been filled yet. But like the torch-lighting which will open the Games themselves, this is also an open-and-shut case. Street deserves the honor, period. No one else can boast of taking a guided tour of hell the way the 30 year old Street has done, as she came back from frightful, horrific crashes, all of them, all the way back, all the way to the Olympic championship. What better way to acknowledge Street's contribution to skiing, to American Olympic success than to let her lead us into battle against the best winter sports athletes of the world. Especially in what will be her final Olympics?

Case closed.

This column will go on a two week hiatus to prepare for the most comprehensive coverage of Olympic speedskating anywhere on the 'net. Beginning February 4th and continuing through the day before Opening Ceremony, we'll have a week of previews of what's to come. Monday, February 4th and Tuesday, February 5th will be short track days, with men's and women's previews, respectively. Then we'll set the table for you with the men's and women's long-track previews on Wednesday, February 7th and Thursday, February 8th. Then sit back and enjoy the first Opening Ceremony of a home Winter Games in 22 years and get ready for daily coverage of speedskating beginning February 9th with the men's 5,000 meters and ending February 23rd. Wall-to-wall coverage of speedskating, and only one place will have it -- right here.

See you then.