Team USA found heroes last week among the forceful, fast and female. With her mother and friends cheering from the stands, speedskater Bonnie Blair won both the 500-meter and 1,000-meter races. Freestyle skier Donna Weinbrecht won the first gold medal in mogul competition, bump-bump-bumping down a slope until it was time to leap in the air, throw her arms to the sky and try, in the argot of the sport, to “buy air.” And on Saturday, Hilary Lindh, an Alaskan who had tended to make her best runs in the practice, finally broke loose and won a silver medal in the daring women’s downhill.
World-class athletes can seem a breed apart. Except, that is, when they fall on their faces. In figure skating, six pairs in a row hit the ice: America’s favorite waitress Calla Urbanski landed smack on the boot of partner Rocky Marval, the trucker. The Korean pair fell so often they almost stopped, but a sympathetic crowd cheered them on. In the men’s figs, champs Kurt Browning and Christopher Bowman both muffed triple axels. In the alpine skiing, all the favorites crashed in the men’s combined, and Kristin Krone wiped out on the combined downhill.
When Artur Dmitriyev and Natalya Mishkutyonok won the gold in pairs figure skating, they extended the Soviet (or, now, ex-Soviet) streak to eight, over 32 years. The U.S. hockey squad recalled more recent history-the 1980 miracle team-as it entered this week’s competition 4-0. In men’s figures, Ukranian Viktor Petrenko, who didn’t even win his national championship, took the gold despite a fall; 27-year-old American Paul Wylie snared silver with the performance of his life and Czechoslovak Petr Barna’s quadruple jump-the first in Olympic history-was good for a bronze.
