Word: nagano
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...near rustic city in Japan, the Games beckon once again as a refuge from the snares of the world, where the tawdry can be banished (alas, except for commercial logos) and where the most compelling mysteries involve the intricacies of quad jumps, clap skates, luge weight and curling. For Nagano is robed in that symbol of purity: snow, unsullied and ready for the pursuit of truth as expressed in athletic prowess. Out of mind are potential scapegoats--El Nino, the Asian meltdown. Of course, like all other Olympics, Nagano has its intrinsic debates, but they are sporting and professional ones...
...face was that beatific smile, won by defiance of every sort of gravity, not just the earth's but the body's and the mind's as well, dangerous forces that cannot just bring a skater down but keep her down too. At the Winter Games in Nagano, Kwan will be joined on Team U.S.A. by two others who can smile in the face of gravity and adversity: Tara Lipinski and Nicole Bobek. All have been national champions. And, yes, they are all veterans, even Lipinski at 15, of juggling skating careers with public adoration, of living life...
...expected. As an alternate, she had to practice on a separate rink alone, once again feeling like the little girl watching her brother have all the fun on the ice. She vowed she would never go to the Olympics again just to watch. Now she is heading for Nagano as not only the American champion but also the overwhelming favorite for the gold...
While she would have liked to arrive in Nagano as the U.S. ladies' champion, Lipinski is seasoned enough to put her loss behind her. "It was disappointing," she says of the dramatic fall that cost her the short program and forced her to battle back from fourth place to take the silver. "The biggest thing for me was that I made a mistake but I got up and did the rest of my program well instead of falling more and falling apart and not being able to hold it together. That felt good to me, that I could show everybody...
Citius, Altius, Fortius, and they give you the gold: it's the Olympic Way. But figure skating is not there yet, and this makes Nagano tough to handicap. With styles for every judge's taste, the program will include Todd Eldredge, 26, the five-time American champ from Chatham, Mass., who is back on form after suffering shoulder and rib injuries but has yet to land a quad in competition; a pair of elegant young Russians, Ilia Kulik and Alexei Yagudin, exemplars of old-school, glamour-puss skating; and a sleeper. American Michael Weiss, 21, from Fairfax, Va., will hope...