Apolo Anton Ohno gets Lucky in 2010 Olympics - 02-13-10

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Apolo Anton Ohno gets Lucky in 2010 Olympics - 02-13-10

VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- On the last turn of the men's gold medal 1,000-meter sprint at the 2002 Winter Olympics at Salt Lake City, Apolo Anton Ohno and three other speed skaters jostling for the highest platform on the podium slipped and crashed. An Australian named Steven Bradbury slid by the human pileup to victory...Bradbury was lucky.

Eight years later on Saturday night at the Canucks' old Pacific Coliseum, Ohno was lucky, too. When two of three Korean skaters -- Lee Ho-Suk and Sung Si-Bak -- got tangled and slipped and crashed in front of him on the final turn in the men's 1500-meter race, Ohno got a medal that looked to have gotten past him. How appropriate.

After all, Ohno is no Bradbury. He has an Olympic career that has now seen him medal in three consecutive Winter Games. His silver medal on Saturday tied him with Bonnie Blair for the most medals ever won by a U.S. athlete in the Winter Olympics.

Ohno was deserving of having one fall his way after all his success beating the pack for so many years.

This wasn't luck being the residue of design, as the old axiom goes. This was luck being the product of what has been a fabulous career that blossomed on the world stage just over a decade.

There was the silver medal Ohno won at the World Championships in Sofia in 1999. There were the other medals -- gold and silver -- he won at the Salt Lake Games. There were the nine gold medals he won at the World Championships between 2001 and last year. There was the gold and two bronze medals he took home from Turin's Olympics in 2006.

Share If there has been a speed skater or winter Olympian in this country more deserving of all that Ohno has accomplished this decade I don't know him or her. Ohno even passed Eric Heiden as the most decorated U.S. male athlete at the Winter Games.

I don't know that what Ohno amassed on Saturday makes him the greatest U.S. Winter Olympian ever. Heiden won his five gold medals at one Olympics and set four Olympic records and one world record along the way. Blair competed for the U.S. in four consecutive Olympics. She was nothing short of a Winter Games fixture. Then there are all the figure skaters like Dorothy Hamill, Sarah Hughes, Dick Button and Peggy Fleming, not to mention that miracle men's hockey team -- the one in 1980 -- that beat Canada, the Russians and the Czechs to win gold.

But memories are short. Who remembers all of them? Ohno is embedded in our conscience now and he's not done at just 27 if he doesn't want to be.

As Blair allowed in an interview with ChicagoNow.com on the eve of these Olympics: "Short track is a process of elimination races. The one thing about short track is when you go into a race, it's not about one plan in front of you. In addition to Plan A, you got to have Plan B and Plan C. Part of short track is a game of chance."

Ohno lost that gamble at Salt Lake and won it in Vancouver. His sixth Olympic medal -- which he happily indicated immediately after crossing the finish line by holding up one finger on one hand and all his fingers and thumb stretched out on his other hand -- was not tarnished by any measure.

"The whole race there was a lot of contact, bumping, grabbing," he said. "It was a crazy race. Ho-Suk set up a pretty wild pass and it didn't work out for him.

"It was an aggressive race. It was a fast race and it turned out well for me."

Ohno has won at his sport in every conceivable way now. He's come from behind. He's sprinted away from competitors and won by relatively lengthy margins. He won his first gold at Salt Lake City in 2002 by crawling across the finish line with blood trickling from his leg onto the ice following some bumping and grinding that makes short-track skating look like NASCAR for human bodies, or roller derby, I guess you could say.

And he's got three more races to go in Vancouver, any of which he could capture and one of which he will almost certainly medal in to separate himself from the most impressive pack, also deservedly.

"For me, from a results standpoint," Ohno said thinking of the rest of these Games, "anything more is icing on the cake." 


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