The Elvises have left the slopes

SALT LAKE CITY - They end today, the 19th Winter Games, and they'll leave us with the best souvenirs possible, the kind you can collect only in your mind ...

Alexei Yagudin wins gold in figure skating and passes all drug screenings. Of course, they don't test for wasp spit.

Yagudin is one of 38 athletes at the Games taking a product called Vespa Sports Supplement. The endurance-enhancing drink includes the saliva of Asian killer wasps, pests that fly an average of 60 miles a day.

"When we first came over with it from Japan, people thought we were nuts," says Vespa Power Products representative Eddy Clarke, of Yorba Linda. "People looked at us like we were on drugs. Now, we're getting respect from the athletes."

But not the wasps.

Paul O'Connor is 43 and bald and finishes next to last in his event, the 1.5-kilometer sprint. But he is also Irish, the country's first cross-country skier in the Olympics.

He competed in five events to qualify for the Games. He will compete in no more.

"We have a saying in Ireland," O'Connor explains. "There's no point in boiling the cabbage twice."

A sportswriter is sitting at short-track racing, watching bodies collide and slide skates-up, frozen turkey-like into padded walls. A giddy spectator sitting nearby taps him on the shoulder and says: "Have you ever seen dog racing? That's what this is, dog racing!"

The spectator is Steve Young.

In a celebration of athletic prowess, of sweating and muscle and strength, he wins the gold medal for brains. Alexander Penna, a Brazilian cross-country skier, has a master's degree and a doctorate and once wrote a thesis entitled: "The Privatization of the Petroleum Industry in Europe."

He wrote the paper in Norwegian but had 11 other languages from which to choose. Penna also speaks English, Portuguese, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Japanese, Swedish, Danish, Dutch and Greek.

As for athletic ability, he is 59th among 59 finishers in the 50- kilometers. He crosses the line 1 hour, 17 minutes after the winner.

An official Salt Lake 2002 Torch Relay vehicle, decorated with stickers that shout its purpose, is parked outside a local strip club.

Australia arrives having won as many Winter Games gold medals as Neptune. Then the Aussies claim two just days apart when Alisa Camplin triumphs in aerials even though she's second best on her own team, and Steven Bradbury overcomes the fact he's the worst skater in the 1,000-meter finals.

Camplin takes gold in the absence of injured teammate Jacqui Cooper, whose shadow, entering the Games, had swallowed all the other Aussies.

"I wanted to win it, but come on," Camplin says, "I had never won anything."

Bradbury is in last place in the quarterfinals, semifinals and finals until collisions allow him to streak - OK, plod - to the front each time. The medal race is the biggest shocker, especially to him.

"Hang on a minute," he remembers thinking at the finish, "I think I've just won."

Two suspicious-looking boxes are discovered in a garbage can. Police seal off a three-block section and employ a robot to extract them. A high-pressure water hose blasts them open. The contents? Baloney sandwiches.

Security, we are glad to report, is big-league serious here. Officials also ignite a container that ends up being filled with box lunches and explode a grocery bag containing traffic flares.

Favorite athlete name? A tie, between Chinese skater Yang Yang and her teammate Yang Yang. One is known as Yang Yang (A), the other Yang Yang (S). One was born in August, the other September.

Tooele, Utah, has a cozy downtown decorated with dozens of American flags, a barbershop and a railroad museum. And nearly 10,000 tons of chemical agent, including nerve gas designed to kill a man from the inside out.

The Deseret Chemical Depot, about 30 miles from Salt Lake City, is where officials dispose of outdated chemical-filled rockets.

Said one local when asked about the danger of exposure: "It will make your nose run, then your eyes will start to water, then your throat will begin to constrict, then you'll drop to the ground in a fit of convulsions until you die. Or so I'm told."

These Games teach us about freestyle skiing, like aerials. These competitors launch themselves skyward then perform tricks that appear to be inspired by a condition known as burning underwear.

They twitch and twist themselves all for the sake of style points, never once showing concern for the fact they are nearly six stories off the ground.

"Those guys shoot up in the air, do all those turns," Armenian bobsledder Dan Janjigian says. "I wouldn't do that with a gun to my head."

A hockey team skates onto the ice, and Shirley Kennedy begins to cry, a reminder that the Olympics aren't just for the athletes, but their families, as well. Her daughter, Courtney, plays for Team USA.

"She has cried a few times through all of this," Courtney says. "My parents are more emotional about everything than I am."

Mom watches the game wearing a sweatshirt that reads, "Courtney, the other Kennedy from Massachusetts."

Motto of the 2002 Olympics: "Light the fire within."

Motto of the nearby Squatters Pub: "Quench the thirst within."

Switzerland's Reto Goetschi, a bobsledder, says he also is accomplished in "Schwingen," a type of wrestling passed down from Swiss farmers. In it, participants try for takedowns by yanking on their opponent's shorts.

Asked to explain the G-forces experienced while bobsledding, American Jill Bakken says, "You'll find out how flexible you are. If you can't touch your toes normally, you'll be touching your face to the floor in this sport."

In ski jumping, the competitors basically drop from the sky, shoot off a ramp and sail roughly the length of Utah.

Meanwhile, at the bottom of the hill, there are people ringing cow bells, kids rolling in the snow and two men dressed as patriotic Elvises, in sparkling red, white and blue too-tight jumpsuits.

Zeke Steggall has suffered 15 concussions and broken his left foot 15 times.

And he isn't even a journalist.

A Dutch photographer breaks his pelvis in three places and tears knee ligaments when he slips on the women's downhill course, falls 200 feet and smashes into a tree. While he's being rescued, someone slips and runs over him on a snowboard.

An International Sports Broadcasting employee falls down a chute off the back side of a mountain. Searchers do find him.

An hour later.

These Games teach us about shovel racing. Gail Boles, of Taos, N.M., is a pharmacist and one of the best in this extreme and extremely bizarre sport. He is known as "the pill-sorting sultan of sledding."

Francois Gagnon, a reporter from Quebec City, slips out of his hotel room to grab a newspaper on the floor. The door closes behind him. Gagnon is naked.

Using two sections of the paper to cover himself, he goes to the hotel manager, who lets him back in his room - then throws him out of the hotel.

Gagnon tells the Ottawa Citizen: "I tried to make a little joke and said, 'I'm lucky it was a broadsheet and not a tabloid.'"

Copyright 2002
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