2/13/2006: Oh no, Apolo.. and Bode and Daron
Not a good day for short track speedskater and medal favorite Apolo Anton Ohno, although he does still have the best name of the Games this year.
He clipped the blade of Chinese skater Li Ye in the next to last lap of the 1,500 meter race, which was enough to make him stumble out of qualifying for the event that he won at the last Olympics.
Short track is one of those bizarre sports that most of us only see during the Olympics. It's a combination of speed skating and an old fashioned roller derby slugfest. I wouldn't want a steady diet of it but it's fun to watch, especially the team relays. Apolo will be back for one of those, as well as two other individual races.
Things got really weird after that, when the losers had to come back for a skate-off in case everyone in the finals gets disqualified. There are a lot of disqualifications for pushing & interfering in short track but it isn't likely there'd be enough that these guys would get a shot. But that's how they do it. I guess Apolo was maybe looking at it as pointless too, 
as he was nowhere to be found when the race was ready to start. The racers, the coaches, even his dad were looking all around for him and seemed a little panicky. Apolo showed up then, started climbing over the crash bumpers and the coaches or whoever were grabbing him & holding him back as if he didn't belong and was trying to sneak in! It was bizarre.
Apolo just backed out from them, moved a few yards down, climbed onto the ice and to the starting line. He didn't seem to be into the skate-off race at all, trailing the pack until the last lap or so when he moved up a bit and finished third.
Things didn't go much better for Americans in the downhill but it was another strange one. Outspoken Bode Miller (my favorite) shot down the hill at 75 mph on brand new skis that only came out of the factory two days ago. The commentators were talking like he was nuts - but hey, they always talk about Bode like that. He came in a mere 4/10 of a second behind the leader (which is a staggering idea when you think about it) which put him in 4th place.
Teammate and medal favorite Daron Rahlves was going to use the only other pair of these particular factory-fresh skis in existence but changed his mind at the last minute, maybe after hearing Bode didn't make first place on his. Rahlves was changing his skis literally seconds before he flew out of the gate - it was all just weird by any standards - but it didn't help. Rahlves crossed the finish line in ninth place.
In qualifying runs the other day, almost all the racers put their brakes on before the finish line so they wouldn't finish first and have to ski last today. But the guy who did go last, France's Antoine Deneriaz, showed them all and beat everyone's time, taking home the gold medal and pushing Miller and Rahlves back to fifth & tenth place respectively. Austria's Michael Walchhofer took the silver and Switzerland's Bruno Kernen the bronze. I guess it's only fitting that the premier alpine event went to guys from the Alps.
