Short track and controversy -- imperfect together

It was the site of the first speedskating world record on American soil in a non-Olympic setting since March, 1959. But, now we are being asked to believe that it was also the place of a victory most foul. A mushroom cloud is forming over the American short track men's Olympic team, and no one knows how it's going to turn out.

Short track speedskater Tom O'Hare fired off a letter to U.S. Olympic Committee executive Lloyd Ward on Thursday to look into the circumstances surrounding his ouster from the Olympic team, due to Shani Davis' win on the 1,000 meter final December 22 at the Utah Olympic Oval in Kearns, UT.

His complaint alleges collusion on the part of Apolo Ohno and Rusty Smith, the runner-up in that race to keep him at bay; in essence, running interference for Davis to make the team. In an interview with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, O'Hare asserted that Ohno and Smith colluded in the 1,000-meter final to not only:

* Enable Davis to win, thereby adding 937 points to his score at the time of 367, thus bumping O'Hare (who, going into the final had accumulated throughout the trials 1,110 points) off the Olympic team, plus:

* Prevent Ron Biondo from finishing in the top two, thereby giving Smith a spot in the individual 1,000m race in February over Biondo -- who made the team but, is now is only eligible to race the 5,000m relay and be first, and only, alternate in individual races should Ohno or Smith not be able to compete in one next month.

"It was a typical case of 'You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours,'" said O'Hare, a 1998 U.S. short track Olympian, to the Post-Dispatch. "Rusty needed Biondo blocked, and Apolo said, 'Sure, I'll help you out, but you have to let Shani win.'"

O'Hare's attorney, Kevin Duff, told the Associated Press Friday that "We believe that the result of the race was predetermined by the conduct of one or more participants in the race, and we've expressed to the USOC that we believe that this is a violation both of the U.S. Speedskating and U.S. Olympic Committee Code of Conduct."

Mike Moran, USOC spokesman, said they asked U.S. Speedskating for results of its internal probe no later than January 8th, this coming Tuesday. The special counsel hired by USS, Steve Smith (no relation), told ESPN.com Friday afternoon that the USOC didn't yet inform him of this, and that any info that he gathered that the USOC wanted would be confidential under the provisions of attorney-client privilege.

"There's a lot of things that we'd have to do before we can assume that we'll turn over the results of our investigation," Smith said. That investigation is scheduled to end next Thursday.

But, it wasn't just O'Hare who thought there was something awry that day.

On the day after the 1,000m final, short track skater J.P. Kepka, who qualified for the Olympic team, said there had been something "fishy" about the race. Biondo himself told the Cleveland Plain-Dealer afterward the results reflected "dirty skating." The chief official of that race, Jim Chapin, a man who has refereed short track races for three decades, confided to the Post-Dispatch on December 26 he had "no doubts, and neither did my four assistants" that the race was "a setup."

"No matter when he (Ohno) wanted to make a move, the race was over (all week)," Chapin told the St. Louis newspaper. "So why all of a sudden in the last race did he not make a move?"

All of this could have been avoided if Ohno, who had already amassed such an insurmountable points lead that he already had qualified for the 1,000 to begin with, had simply withdrawn from the final day's racing.

This story is far, farther and farthest from over, friends.

Speedskating's newest indoor oval was christened this past weekend with the European Championships, the final continental title competition before Salt Lake City, playing out in the Gunda Niemann Halle in Erfurt, Germany. The oval was an outdoor facility for a time until it was covered last year, and this was its first major event.

It was just the second European Championship since 1990 not to include the legendary Niemann-Stirnemann, on the sidelines due to pregnancy; she's looking at an early summer date for the birth of her first child. Not that the home fans were expecting a collapse; after all, they have the world all-around champion, Anni Friesinger, and the defending Olympic 5,000m winner Claudia Pechstein, the only woman to break four minutes in a 3,000m race, ready and waiting to continue their country's dominance.

On the men's side, the Dutch would not have their triple threat -- Rintje Ritsma, Gianni Romme and Ids Postma -- who are preparing for the Olympics in their own ways. So it would be up to Jochem Uytdehaage and Carl Verheijen to carry on the orange's winning ways.

And so they did.

Uytdehaage won his first European championship title by not finishing any worse than fifth in any race he skated. He was fourth on the 500 and was runner-up at the 5,000 on Friday; fifth on the 1,500 Saturday, and fourth on the 10,000 meters Sunday.

Verheijen, the defending world single distance champion on the 10,000, took the silver (even though he was 18th on the 500, he won the 5,000 and was fourth on the 1,500, third on the 10,000).

Last year's European men's winner, Dimitri Shepel of Russia, salvaged partly what has been a nightmarish first half of the season with the bronze. It was the Netherlands' 16th Euro title as a nation since 1983.

The women's races were anticlimactic to say the least. Friesinger swept all four races, as she made amends for last year's frightful fall on the first distance, which knocked her out of the competition.

Pechstein, the defending Olympic 5,000m champion, who had been Niemann-Stirnemann's foil all these years, once more had to settle for the silver medal again (her third silver in four years, with the 1998 crown being her lone continental championship). But, with Niemann-Stirnemann out of the mix, who would finish third? That wound up being a bit more interesting.

Tonny deJong of the Netherlands and Varvara Barysheva of Russia were third and fourth on the 500, the only women's race on Friday. Barysheva captured bronze on the 1,500, followed by deJong and teammate Renate Groenewold, respectively. The latter two were more than capable on the 3,000, which followed later on Saturday to cut into Barysheva's .24 lead on deJong and a more imposing 3.74 second lead on Groenewold.

It was on the three-kilometer where Barysheva's hopes for the podium fell apart. Groenewold finished second to Friesinger on that race, with deJong in fifth. Barysheva could do no better than eight, which effectively sent her tumbling to fifth overall. Now going into the 5,000 on Sunday, deJong had a 1.51 second lead on Groenewold, and a three-second gap on Barysheva for the bronze.

Of those three, the Russian would skate first. Advantage deJong and Groenewold, since they knew what times they would have to beat. Yet, deJong would skate in the next pair, and Groenewold would face Friesinger in the final race of the ladies' competition. Pulled along by Friesinger's pace, Groenewold wound up with the 5,000m bronze, with deJong in fourth. The deficit she made up on deJong was enough in the end for the overall bronze, as deJong was four-hundredths of a second outside of the medal stand. Barysheva was fifth.

Friesinger's sweep was the first time a female skater won all four races (500, 1,500; 3,000 and 5,000 meters) since Niemann (who else?) pulled off the feat in 1995, and only the third time since 1988.

The Dutch, Italians and Norwegians had their national sprint championships this past weekend; in the former's case, to determine who would squeeze into a possible extra spot or two on the 500 and 1,000, while the latter two were determining who would go to next month's Olympics themselves.

Gerard van Velde and Andrea Nuyt won the Dutch sprint championships in Groningen, Netherlands, made conspicuous by the absence of Marianne Timmer, who suffered an unknown injury before the championships began and did not participate. Jan Bos and Erben Wennemars were second and third on the men's side, but Ids Postma, the defending Olympic 1,000m champion, made quite a case for his being selected (he has not yet earned a ticket on the distance, but he won the first day's 1,000 and was runner-up on the other).

Veteran Annamarie Thomas and Marieke Wijsman were the silver and bronze medallists on the women's races.

In Collalbo, Italy, Ermanno Ioratti and Chihara Simionato punched their tickets to Salt Lake City with victories in that country's sprint championships. Less certain of going to the Games are Dino Gilarduzzi and Davide Carta, the second and third-place men, and Gessica Martello and Elisa Baitella, the only other skaters competing with Simionato on the women's events.

Finally, at Tansberg, Norway, Pal Gravem and Edel Therese Hoiseth were victorious at that country's set of 500 and 1,000 meter races and will surely head for Salt Lake City based on those results. A lot, too, for a fair amount of countries, depends on next weekend's Heerenveen, Netherlands World Cup, the final one before the Games. Every distance will be contested except the men's 10,000 and women's 5,000, but times on the men's five and women's three kilometers, which will be raced, will have a bearing on the Olympics' longest distance races.

And we'll have a full recap of this important World Cup event, plus a preview of the World Sprint Championships, the final world championship meet before SLC, next time out.