Word: skater
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American Speed Skater Dan Jansen was carrying a weight of grief last week, and he fell. At 22, he was at the top of his form, having won the 500-meter at the world sprint championships near his home in West Allis, Wis., just a week earlier. But at 6 a.m. Sunday, eleven hours before he was to pursue the gold at that distance in Calgary, Jansen was summoned to a phone. It was a call from the hospital room of his sister Jane with the news that she was rapidly losing her yearlong battle with leukemia. The eldest...
...first riddle: What comes first, a figure skater's performance or reputation? Put another way, Are judges chicken to have egg on their faces? During the long and short programs, they put great weight on the reputation of a contestant. A neophyte skater may turn in a string of leaps and spins more dazzling than Katarina Witt's smile and still get lower marks than the reigning queen of the rink. The practice cuts across political affiliations. A Soviet judge will give a prominent American higher marks than a fledgling Russian who skates a comparable program. And vice versa...
Canada's Fitness and Sport Minister, former Skater Otto Jelinek, apparently agreed, and asked O.C.O. to "cease and desist" from harassing small companies that were clearly not hurting the licensing efforts. O.C.O. has taken added lumps over public suspicions that it is elitist -- giving sponsors & preferential treatment on tickets and accommodations, being more interested in playing host to such visiting royalty as Norway's King Olav, Spain's Juan Carlos and Monaco's Prince Rainier than it is in the people of the host city. "I hope the Games do show a profit," says Reg Brown, 44, a rancher outside...
...surprise, the Americans. Abandoning their customary ranch outfits ("Thank heavens," said Skier Debbie Armstrong), the U.S. team wore overcoats long enough to hide tommy guns (blue coats for the men, white for the molls) and snowy, wide-brim hats from out of the '30s. "Al Capone!" exclaimed Japanese Speed Skater Atsushi Akasaka, 20, who has no English. It looked a little like a jolly bootlegger's funeral...
...momentary thaw (one of Calgary's snow-eating chinooks) melted the town three days before fledgling Figure Skater Robyn Perry got up on her toes to reach the Olympic cauldron. Two years short of the competitors' minimum age, the local whiz kid represented youth's considerable promise; also, bravery. A week earlier, before the thermometer shot from 11 degrees below to 45 degrees and back to 21 degrees again, the Olympic torch blew up spectacularly. Engineers called it a "minor malfunction," but Perry may have wished for a longer handle...