Word: skiing
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...taking the crisp morning air in St. Moritz, high in the Swiss Alps, preparing for another day of arduous sportswriting labor--the World Bobsleigh Championships, I believe. Let's see: start with a hot chocolate, a brisk ski across the lake, maybe lunch at the Palace and then...
...slate of what Americans consider the Peripherals--nonmarquee sports that zoom into the sporting Zeitgeist every fourth year only to melt away in the post-Games thaw--is at an all-time high. At Salt Lake we'll have all kinds of sleds, cross-country races (some with guns!), ski jumps and ski-jump hybrids. In the past, these events have given us Jamaican bobsledders, hyperdrugged European ski champs and Eddie the Eagle, Great Britain's wonderfully woebegone ski jumper who had all of Calgary ducking for cover in 1988. The U.S. has won about a medal and a half...
...Games and is now one of the most poignant. His grandfather Jack was the oldest living U.S. Olympic gold medalist at 91, having won twice in speed skating at the 1932 Games. Jimmy's father Jim Sr. was a Nordic combined athlete--that's ski jumping followed by cross-country skiing--in the 1964 Olympics. Both men were to be in the stadium when Jimmy marched in, but Jack was killed in a car accident two weeks ago. Jimmy will slide with his grandfather's funeral card taped to his helmet...
...still can, if you like, make jokes about the cross-country ski team, which will get buried in ice chips. It's not the team's fault. The worst-kept secret this side of bike racing is that the best cross-country skiers, seeking superhuman endurance, are often druggies. "If you take the results page and look at the Top 30," says Justin Wadsworth, 33, who will compete in his third Games at Salt Lake City, "up to 40% could possibly be dopers...It almost makes me sick." Last year six Finns failed drug tests at the world championships. Rest...
...state's leaders know that. So, as if by rote, they recite the advantages of living in Utah: low crime, great mountains, those five national parks, a tech-savvy population with the nation's highest per capita ownership of computers, and 45-min. access to world-class ski resorts from the center of Salt Lake. Yet the image of Paradise Postponed persists. The Mormon presence is always there in the background, a faint theme song that never gets turned off. "My parents think I am insane to live here," says Katherine Glover, 36, an urban planner who moved to Salt...