Kearns, Week one review: While everyone catches their breath

It's not exactly a true half-way point review of the speedskating at these Olympic Games, but now's as good a time as any to recognize the good, bad and ugly from the first week of speedskating at the Winter Olympics.

You can now compare Chris Witty to Bonnie Blair: The websites of CBS, ESPN and CNN snubbed her stunning 1,000m gold medal and world record performance to devote their time to their perceived top story of the day -- a Daytona 500 straight from hell, where only 11 of the 43 cars that started the race, finished it. Even though it was on a day when Witty and Jennifer Rodriguez bailed out the American team from going 0-for-Sunday in Salt Lake City, which would have broken a streak of earning at least one medal per day, these websites thought it more important to cover a stock car race that more resembled roller derby than auto racing.

Witty also had the misfortune to cap one of the great athletic comebacks from illness in any sport on the same evening Jamie Sale and David Pelletier got their deserved gold medals in pairs figure skating, which occurred one night after the near-riotous end of the men's 1,000m short track final, where Steven Bradbury of Australia defeated (and dammit, that's what it'll go down as) Apolo Ohno to win their first-ever gold medal in a Winter Olympics. Even Bradbury got more ink in the Philadelphia newspapers' sports sections than Witty did.

Plop-plop of the first week (a better award than the Fizz-Fizz trophy): Jens Boden of Germany. Completely overshadowed by a more heralded teammate, Frank Dittrich, Boden plopped his butt on the starting line and a little over six minutes later, surprised his countrymen and women by winning an unexpected bronze on the men's 5,000m February 9.

Fizz-Fizz of Week 1: Anni Friesinger, defending European and World Allround Cchampion. A one-woman wrecking ball through the World Cup season leading up to Salt Lake, and who has still yet to get a medal. Her signature distance, the 1,500m is coming up Wednesday, and she is currently 1-1 vs. Rodriguez in head-to-head pairings. So there's no way she can possibly not get a medal here. We think.

Shocker: Pick one, any one. All will do nicely. Casey Fitzrandolph's 500m gold, Witty's skate for the ages, the fact that all six medals the Americans have won have come from six different skaters, Friesinger going 0-for-2 in medal chances. You also could make a compelling argument for the Netherlands, the New York Yankees of the sport, trailing the home side in the speedskating medal count.

Dan Jansen Redux: Gerard Van Velde of the Netherlands, who had his own near-misses (not as many as Jansen), but two fourth place finishes, and a possible swan-song on the 1,000 meters Saturday night left him with an all-or-nothing last sprint around the oval. And like Jansen, he found redemption and glory. Should he choose to retire from speedskating, it was a hell of a way to go out.

It's a real shame speedskating has had to take a back seat at the XIX Winter Olympics to figure skating, short track and to the trash-sport, X-Games element permeating these Games (snowboarding and freestyle skiing), and this week, to men's hockey. But when you make a choice to be a speedskating fan, this comes with the territory.

When there are regular wipeouts of the variety you saw in short track, it makes for better discussion, for better pictures, and most times, it is at the expense of a sport whose one and only judge is the clock.

You wince when your sport gets cursory, fringe coverage at best, but you know in your heart that speedskating has no equal in terms of winter sport excitement.

I hope I've converted a few readers to that fact. It is undeniably, and without question, a sport that needs to be seen to be appreciated.

Shame on the rest of America who won't give the sport anything other than a shrug of the shoulders.

The men's 1,500 meter pairings for tonight are now made available for your perusal:

1. Nick Pearson (USA, no pairmate)

2. Radik Bikchantayev (KZN) - Dmitry Shepel (RUS)

3. Eskil Ervik (NOR) - Cedric Kuentz (FRA)

4. Andrey Fomin (UKR) - Roberto Sighel (ITA)

5. Vesa Rosendahl (FIN) - Joon Moon (KOR)

6. Enrico Fabris (ITA)- Jens Boden (GER)

7. Johan Rojler (SWE) - Guangbin Liu (CHN)

8. Yongbin Ma (CHN) - Aleksey Khatylyov (BLS - Belarus)

9. Frank Dittrich (GER) - Sergey Tsybenko (KZN - Kazahkstan)

10. Janne Hanninen (FIN) - Jochem Uytdehaage (NED)

11. Igor Makovetsky (BLS) - Sang-Yeop Yeo (KOR)

12. Nikolay Ulyanin (KZN) - Vadim Sayutin (RUS)

(ice preparation after either this, or the 13th pairing)

13. Philippe Marois (CAN)- Vladimir Kostin (KZN)

14. Takaharu Nakajima (JPN)- Christian Breuer (GER)

15. Rintje Ritsma (NED) - Yevgeny Lalenkov (RUS)

16. Zsolt Balo (HUN) - Jan Bos (NED)

17. Aleksandr Kibalko (RUS) - Ids Postma (NED)

18. Stefano Donagrandi (ITA)- Jan Friesinger (GER)

19. Hiroyuki Noake (JPN) - Kyu-Hyuk Lee (KOR)

20. Keiji Shirahata (JPN) - J.P. Shilling (USA)

21. Risto Rosendahl (FIN)- Jae-Bong Choi (KOR)

22. Steve Elm (CAN) - Derek Parra (USA)

23. Petter Andersen (NOR) - Dustin Molicki (CAN)

24. Joe Cheek (USA) - Adne Sondral (NOR)

25. Yusuke Imai (JPN) - Kevin Marshall (CAN)

What Others Are Saying...

"Poor long-track speedskating. While its fellow Olympic ice sports grab worldwide headlines, long track has been left out in the cold. At the Utah Olympic Oval, the story is speed, not scandal.

"No double-axel double-dealing. No wispy-whiskered, wall-whacking, short-track crashes. And the only thing the speedskaters here are smashing are world records."

-- Frank Fitzpatrick, The Philadelphia Inquirer

"She couldn't do it four years ago, when a lot of people thought she could, but Chris Witty did it Sunday, when hardly anybody thought she would.

"Learning in mid-January that she had mononucleosis, Witty wasn't even sure the Salt Lake City Games were in her future. Today, she's the proud, if shocked, owner of the gold medal for the women's 1,000-meter race."

-- Mike Kupper, The Los Angeles Times

"Champions beat other champions, but West Allis' favorite daughter and America's newest gold medalist had to conquer her own body Sunday before she could defeat the fastest speedskaters in the world.

"Mononucleosis doesn't kill people, it just devours their stamina, and it has made a meal out of Witty for the last month. If she had a good day of training, she paid for it with a long day of rest. She knew she needed speed but she needed sleep more."

-- Dale Hoffman, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

"They don't give any iron medal at any Olympics, especially not for a 14th place (me: that was her rank on the 500m last week) when only four years ago you had two far more precious medals around your neck. Iron supplements, actually, was what an anemic Chris Witty wanted, so sick and tired was she of being sick and tired...If some have come back farther than Witty, few have come back faster. Yesterday, the 26-year-old from West Allis, Wisconsin won a gold medal in the 1000 she never, in a million years and months and months of chronic fatigue, thought she could."

-- Jay Greenberg, New York Post

"Jennifer Rodriguez was sweating, sweating profusely, sweating the way she did when she was growing up in Miami.

"She had slipped on the first turn of her 1,000-meter race, a scrape of the blade that she feared would cost her an Olympic medal. She watched nervously as the last pair of skaters raced. German Monique Garbrecht-Enfeldt's split time was fast. Rodriguez figured she'd be bumped to fourth. But when the finishing order flashed up on the scoreboard, Rodriguez was in third place...

"This was no consolation prize for Rodriguez. This was history. On Sunday, she became the first Miamian and the first Cuban-American to win a medal in the Winter Olympics. South Florida, hotbed of football, is now home to one of the world's best speedskaters. South Florida, famed for its beaches, is now home to its own ice queen. While the hot chocolate flowed at the Olympic Oval, cafe con leche toasts were raised in Little Havana."

-- Linda Robertson, The Miami Herald

"Who's that atop the medal standings at the Utah Olympic Oval?

"No, it's not the Netherlands, the birthplace of speedskating.

"Try the Americans, who have won six medals in six events and are on pace for their most successful speedskating venture in Winter Olympic history.

"Many people thought U.S. Speedskating president Fred Benjamin was being overly optimistic when he predicted the team could take up to 10 medals at the Salt Lake City Games, including short track. Now, it looks like Benjamin was being too conservative."

-- Paul Newberry, Associated Press