Word: skater
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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While American fans were cheering the exploits of skating star Sarah Hughes and short track skater Apolo Anton Ohno and Germans acclaimed their lugers and speedskaters, Norway provided the Man of the 2002 Olympics: biathlete Ole Einar Bjorndalen. After taking gold in the three individual biathlon disciplines, 12.5-km pursuit, 10-km sprint and 20 km, he anchored the men's 4x7.5-km relay for Norway's first-ever gold in that event. Biathlon, a combination of cross-country skiing and target shooting, says biathlete Frode Andresen, "is the two disciplines that meet in hell, because it is at one extreme...
...easy being a German winter-sports star. There are so many of them. Take speed skater Anni Friesinger, a glamour girl who has posed ... um, er, provocatively for the popular press. She had to wait until the Games' second week before taking her first medal, a gold in the 1,500 m. In the first week she came in a disappointing fourth in the 3,000 m and fifth in the 1,000 m behind fellow Germans like bitter rival Claudia Pechstein and teammate Sabine Voel-ker, a triple medal winner...
Short track speed skater Kim Dong-Sung of South Korea had just finished first in the 1,500-m race, only an hour after the Korean women's relay team won gold in the 3,000-m on the same ice. It looked like a great night for South Korea. A jubilant Kim grabbed a Korean flag and began a victory lap. But his celebration was stopped short when the referees announced that the Korean skater was disqualified for "cross-tracking," claiming that he had blocked American Apolo Anton Ohno when he attempted to pass Kim in the final...
Skating after an American at an Olympics in the U.S. cannot be the most confidence-boosting experience, especially for a skater from Russia. "Oh, it was so hard to skate after Michelle [Kwan]," said Irina Slutskaya, a favorite in ladies' figure skating. Dodging the love tokens strewn on the ice from Kwan's fans was the least of Slutskaya's worries. Because of the skate order, the 23-year-old Muscovite's performance would determine whether Kwan or Sarah Hughes glided away with gold. If Slutskaya finished ahead of Kwan in the long program, Hughes would win; if she finished...
This week, as the figure-skating competition shifts to the women's event, the focus will be on the judges as much as the skaters. How do they make their decisions? Unlike in other sports, technical prowess counts for only so much. Winning is largely a matter of style. Evaluating the finer points of a skater's presentation, such as poise and emotive display, is subjective territory. But it could mean the difference between gold and silver, as Nancy Kerrigan learned in 1994, when judges ranked her flawless performance at Lillehammer behind Oksana Baiul's slightly flawed but more exuberant...