Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 13, 1992 TAG: 9202130183
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: ALBERTVILLE, FRANCE LENGTH: Medium
GERMANS MAKE THEIR MOVE
THE GERMAN juggernaut roared through the Winter Games, and not even Bonnie Blair could rescue the jinxed Americans.\ In the new world order of the Winter Olympics, Germany took the lead in golds Wednesday, tied Austria for overall medals with 10 and left the Americans out in the cold with the solitary gold won by Bonnie Blair.
The new order also saw the diluted, Russian-led Unified Team fall 4-3 in hockey to Czechoslovakia. In the days when the Soviet sports machine was at full strength, it won seven of the nine gold medals in hockey since 1956 - losing only to the United States at Squaw Valley in 1960 and at Lake Placid in 1980.
Czechoslovakia (3-0) joined Canada as the only hockey teams to clinch berths in the medal round. The Unified Team (2-1) is expected to get in.
One medal out of the first 42 is hardly how the U.S. team expected to start these Games after revamping its Olympic program and pumping millions of dollars into training support after the six-medal debacle in 1988.
Blair, who won her 500-meters speed skating speciality Monday, reluctantly raced the 1,500 to satisfy her coach and boost U.S. spirits.
She shot out of the start and posted the second-fastest time over the first third of the race amid raucous cheers by the "Blair Bunch" of friends and relatives from Champaign, Ill. But she faded by the halfway point and eased up under her coach's orders over the final lap, finishing 21st out of 32 skaters. Teammate Mary Docter finished 15th to pace the U.S. skaters.
Germany's Jacqueline Boerner edged teammate Gunda Niemann by five-hundredths of a second to win the gold in 2 minutes, 5.87 seconds - five seconds faster than Blair. That gave Germany four golds, one more than Austria and the Unified Team. Seiko Hashimoto took the bronze, the first medal by Japan.
Blair's coach, Peter Mueller, said he saw trouble at 300 meters.
"We could really tell it at 700, and I told her to shut it down at 1,100," he said. "Because of the warm weather and wind, it was heavy, a real work ice, not her kind of ice at all."
Mueller, who refused to let Blair talk to reporters, said she was tired and he wanted her to focus on Friday's 1,000 meters.
Germany also garnered gold and silver in the 10-kilometer biathlon with Mark Kirchner and Ricco Gross, like the speed skaters, both formerly of East Germany.
Amid the gloom for Americans was the shining performance of Krista Schmidinger, who skied the race of her life - a 70 mph blitz of the dangerous downhill on part one of the combined event.
Schmidinger mastered notorious bumps and dips, brushed a safety fence and drew gasps from the crowd on her way to the second-fastest time of the day.
"I was pretty psyched when I saw my time," she said, waving to her camera-toting father, Elmar, after covering the 1-mile course in 1 minute, 26.36 seconds, .48 seconds behind leader and World Cup overall champion Petra Kronberger.
Schmidinger is more confident on the downhill than on the slalom - part two of the combined today.
"I haven't run much slalom this year," Schmidinger said. "I'll be putting on my slalom gear and banging some gates."
Austrian sisters Doris and Angelika Neuner swept the gold and silver medals in the women's luge, and Cammy Myler's fifth-place finish was the highest ever for an American even though she had the stomach flu. Doris Neuner's combined time for four runs was 3 minutes, 6.696 seconds, 0.073 seconds faster than her older sister.
Host France got a gold medal from Fabrice Guy and the silver by Sylvain Guillaume in the Nordic combined - the first medals ever by France in Nordic skiing.