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T A B L E_T A L K Olympic Village: All the news on everything that skates, skis, or slides at the Nagano games R E C E N T L Y Retro burger
CBS drops the ball in Nagano
Stoned on ice
Apres moi, de luge
Higher! Faster! Wetter!
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- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - After the race's inevitable cancellation an hour and a half later (much grumbling is now being heard from skiing federation poobahs about the choice of Nagano, which has the most southerly -- hence warm -- location of any Olympics site), I made it back to town without incident except the bus breaking down and us transferring to another. At the station, I decided to try to buy a speed-skating ticket. Lo and behold, there he was again, Mr. Shag, along with his cohorts (a lot of the scalpers are working in teams -- they've even got one old Japanese guy wearing a sign saying "I need tickets" who turns over the booty he acquires to Fagen). But he didn't have my ticket. I ended up buying what turned out to be a standing ticket from him -- its face value was 3100 yen. He asked for 7,000; I countered with 3,000. "Hey man, the event's about to start," I said. "Give me four," he said sourly. Capitalism -- it's great! A moment later I met a young Japanese guy and sold him my ticket to the men's Slovakia-Germany hockey game -- I wanted to see the powerhouse Canadian women play Finland instead. Since I'd seen the U.S. women play Finland the night before, it would be a great way to evaluate the North American arch rivals. He sold me not only a ticket to that game, but to the Big One -- the U.S.-Canada women's game Saturday night. It felt good to be doing transactions at face value -- I didn't want our hosts to think all of us Americans were hustlers -- and even better to know that you could get tickets to different events by wheeling and dealing. I shudder to think what the ladies' figure skating finals long program is going to go for -- $5,000 doesn't seem impossible. (I don't know what face value is -- probably $500.) I could barely stand to watch as two meek and mild Japanese women bought tickets from a scalper -- the cultural collision seemed to favor the scalper by a factor of about 5,000-to-1. Still, Japan didn't become an economic powerhouse by giving its money away. I'd like to think that those two sweet women burned Joe Schmo and sent him off to drown his angry sorrows in some local dive where he would be severely beaten by yakuza. Speaking of yakuza -- that's the Japanese mob, whose members are distinguished by having their little fingers cut off -- the "Welcome to Nagano" brochures tell visitors not to patronize places that don't display a sign saying "We don't associate with yakuza." And sure enough, these signs are all over the place. Odd. If this anti-gangster PR campaign is supposed to be reassuring, it almost has the opposite effect -- I wouldn't have assumed they did associate with yakuza. And what about those businesses that don't show that sign -- are we to presume they are controlled by the Japanese version of the Corleone family? It's all very puzzling. I caught the shuttle to M-Wave, the spectacular huge-overlapping-shingles modernist building where they hold the speed skating. On the bus I started talking to two funny, friendly Dutchmen (the Dutch, from my experience, have got to be some of the most congenial people in the world), one of whom was wearing a little rubber visor that said "Rintje." I asked them who was going to win; the younger guy pointed to his hat. Rintje Ritsma, he said, was The Man, but there were several other strong Dutch skaters. They told me about the Dutch passion for skating, whose most amazing manifestation is a 200-kilometer (!) race on the canals held any year that it gets cold enough for the canals to freeze solid. Thousands of amateurs take part, and the winner is feted throughout the land. As we entered, a big contingent of Dutch fans with their faces painted whooped and hollered. Inside, they had a little brass band. There were plenty of Norwegian, American and Canadian fans, too -- and the flag-waving Japanese fans were revved up, because they had several contenders entered. Speed skating is an extraordinary thing to watch. In terms of sheer speed, all they do is go a mile at the pace of a world-record sprinter. They run the race in a series of heats, usually two skaters at a time who go around an oval three times. The racers start with a wild flurry of running, arms flailing, for 50 meters or so, then put one arm behind them to cut wind resistance and begin their smooth, powerful sideways-pushing leg strokes. They lean in against the serious centrifugal force as they negotiate the turns -- the intricate footwork as they blast through the turns, staying as close as possible to the center line, is dazzling -- and come out flying down the home stretch. They appear to give about 90 percent of an all-out effort -- I'd guess the equivalent of between the 220 and the 440 in track. Every sport has its specific ideal body type, and speed skaters are long-legged, with compact dancer's butts, sleek, lean upper bodies and some really serious quads. None of this is left to the imagination -- like the lugers (whose attire, coupled with their crotch-in-your-face posture, is so genital-prominent that the IOC has issued some nervous pronouncements about it not "looking nice") the suits they wear are absolutely skin-tight. One of the first racers, a German named Christian Breuer, posted an Olympic record of 1:50.96 that held up for at least half the race. But then his time was shattered by one racer after another. The Japanese, buffeted by economic hard times and corruption scandals, have been on a national high since a short, slight young skater named Hiroyasu Shimizu won the gold in the 500 meters -- only the second gold medal ever won by Japan in the Winter Games. (After the race, Shimizu, whose father had passed away, said "The first person I told was my father in heaven.") So when Japanese skater Hiroyuki Noake posted a 1:50.49 to take the lead, the crowd went nuts -- only to be deflated in the next heat, when punk-haired American K.C. Boutiette rang up a 1:50.04. Dutch legend Jan Bos knocked Boutiette out of the top spot with a 1:49.75. Then came the race of races -- another top-ranked Dutchman, Ids Postma, going against a compact, cherubic-faced Norwegain named Aadne Sondral. Postmas blistered his first quarter in 23.85, the fastest start of the day, with Sondral just behind at 24.00. At the split they were still neck and neck, Postma leading by a fifth of a second. At the three-quarters mark, incredibly, they were dead even -- 1:19.08 each. Then came the final turn. As Postma, in the inside track, leaned through the curve, he lost his balance for a fraction of a second and lost form, his body coming up too high. He quickly regained his balance, but as they came down the stretch, the crowd on its feet roaring, Sondral had taken the lead. He crossed the line at 1:47.87 -- a new world record. The Norwegian threw his hands into the air and exulted. Postma clocked a 1:48.13. If he hadn't slipped, the race and the world record might have been his. In the last race, Rintje Ritsma clocked a 1:48.52 for the bronze. The Dutch cheered their heroes, the Norwegians screamed in joy, the Japanese fans, though disappointed, applauded enthusiastically. As Sondral took his honor lap after the ceremony, the Dutch band struck up a tune in his honor. Later that night, by odd coincidence, when I was getting out of a taxi after the Canada-Finland hockey game -- the U.S. women had better look out, because Canada, which won, 4-2, looks unbeatable -- the two amiable Dutch guys got in. Were they disappointed that the Dutch didn't win gold? "We love the Norwegians, too," said the older man. I'm beginning to understand why some people are Olympics junkies. At their
best, the Games are not only the world's greatest athletic contest, they're a
great party for the world.
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