Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 15, 1992 TAG: 9202150237
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: ALBERTVILLE, FRANCE LENGTH: Medium
EVEN HEIDEN IMPRESSED WITH BLAIR
Even Eric Heiden bowed to Bonnie Blair, mistress of speed on ice and one-woman terminator of America's winter woes.Two-hundredths of a second made the difference in the 1,000 meters Friday as Blair became the first American woman ever to win three Winter Olympics gold medals and the first in 40 years to win two in one Winter Olympics.
Heiden, a winner of a record five speed skating golds in 1980, called Blair the sport's greatest female sprinter ever, marveling over her ability to maintain supremacy in the fastest races for so long.
Heiden, praising her without diminishing his own unique accomplishment of winning at short, medium and long distances, said, "Think of it. She's been competitive for four years. I only had to do it once."
The Winter Games never saw the likes of another champion on Day 7, a stripling from Finland who is as skinny as skis but soars like a sparrow.
Toni Nieminen revolutionized the ski jump with his V-style leap - skis pointed out in mid-flight - and took off on a 400-foot, 2-inch flight that gave Finland the team jumping title and made him the youngest male gold medalist in Winter Olympic history.
He needed every foot of it, too. It was the Finns' final jump, and Austria was leading. As it was, Finland's margin, combining distance and style points, was a scant 1.5 - 644.4 to 642.9.
"I just flew," said Nieminen, successor to legendary Finn Matti Nykanen. "I knew I needed a great jump if I was going to give my team the victory, and I was under a lot of pressure."
Nieminen, 16 years, 259 days old, was one day younger than American Billy Fiske, who won a gold in the 1928 Games in four-man bobsled. Norwegian figure skater Sonja Henie of Norway was 15 when she won a gold medal in the 1928 Winter Games at St. Moritz, Switzerland.
It also was a landmark day for Austria, which surpassed its previous high of 12 medals at Innsbruck in 1964.
France approached a record of its own, winning a gold in the women's biathlon relay for a total of seven medals, two shy of the country's high in the 1968 Grenoble Games.
Germany was atop the medal standings with 14, including five golds, to lead Austria by one and the Unified Team by four.
France's world-champion ice dancers, Isabelle and Paul Duchesnay, wowed a packed crowd in the compulsory portion to finish third behind two Russian couples - Marina Klimova and Sergei Ponomarenko and Maia Usova and Alexander Zhulin. U.S. champions April Sargent-Thomas and Russ Witherby were 10th.
"This was more like a hockey game," Sargent-Thomas said. "The crowds are really wild here."
The United States is in a seventh-place tie with Italy with four medals each. So far, the women are carrying the U.S. team, with Blair and moguls skier Donna Weinbrecht winning the only three golds. Nelson Carmichael won a bronze in the men's moguls.
In Blair's speed skating race, China's Ye Qiaobo came in second at 1:21.92, just ahead of bronze medalist Monique Garbrecht of Germany, and the U.S. skater's victory evoked a big celebration from her cheering section, the Blair Bunch. Blair had just become the first American woman to win two golds in the Winter Games since Andrea Mead Lawrence won the slalom and giant slalom in 1952.
"Somebody up there is watching over her, and I'm sure it's probably her dad helping, talking to somebody up there who must like her," Eleanor Blair said of her daughter's good fortune. Blair's father, who died two years ago, was a skating coach who had been her inspiration all her life.
Blair, the first American athlete since Heiden to win at least two golds in the same Winter Games, said she hasn't made up her mind yet about going on to race in the Lillehammer Games in 1994. She is sure, though, that no one ever will match Heiden's versatility at various distances.
"That's too difficult. At this point, everyone is becoming so specialized that you're not finding a skater who is able to dominate like Eric and win all the events," she said. "Training and the rinks, everything has just become so far advanced that I just don't think it's possible for somebody to do what Eric did. That was a very unique situation, and I don't think we'll see it again."