Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 23, 1992 TAG: 9202230174
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: ALBERTVILLE, FRANCE LENGTH: Medium
A DAY OF MORE FALTERS THAN FAME
TOMBA COMES IN SECOND and the U.S. hockey team gets humiliated as the Winter Olympics begin to wind down. A short-track speed skating medal ends up being theonly U.S. bright spot.\ Alberto Tomba lost with style in a glorious, if futile, chase for gold. The U.S. hockey players simply faded away, numbly absorbing a fusillade of shots, leaving empty-handed and fighting among themselves for a change.
Tomba felt the beast inside him again Saturday, roaring down the mountain, voraciously eating up snow and time. It was a race of desperation from too far behind, a charge that ended a blink of an eye too late, but it stamped these Winter Games with a moment of greatness.
Norway's Finn Christian Jagge won the slalom gold, Tomba the silver, yet the legend of La Bomba grew Saturday even in defeat.
At the hockey rink in Meribel, the Americans fell less nobly. Their one-man team, goalie Ray LeBlanc, couldn't stop another non-stop attack as they lost to Czechoslovakia 6-1 in the bronze-medal game one day after falling to the Russian-led Unified Team.
LeBlanc, fed up with the barrage aimed at him for the second straight night, argued with coach Dave Peterson after facing 24 shots in the first period.
"I was trying to get the team going any way I could," LeBlanc said later. "I suggested some things. He suggested some things."
At one point in the exchange, Peterson told LeBlanc: "Get hard-nosed!"
LeBlanc continued his outstanding play but left in embarrassment, taken out with 17:22 left in the game for second-stringer Scott Gordon after Czechoslovakia built a 4-0 lead.
LeBlanc, who had played every minute of every American game, could do little to stop any of the goals.
Only a gold medal by Cathy Turner in short-track speed skating salvaged the day for the Americans, which wound up ninth in the bobsled even without Herschel Walker and finished the Games with 11 medals, one short of its record in 1932 and 1980.
Turner, who initially gave up the sport eight years ago, survived a near fall a few feet from the finish to win the women's 500-meter race.
Turner, who also got a silver as part of the 3,000-meter relay team, became the second American woman speed skater to win two medals, joining Bonnie Blair, who had two golds.
Three of the five U.S. golds were won by speed skaters, and nine of the medals overall were won With one day to go in the Games, Germany clinched the medals race with 26, including 10 golds. Twenty of the medals, including eight gold, came from former East Germans. by women.
Jagge's victory over Tomba was the stuff of legends in the land of the Vikings. Four years after Norway left Calgary with no golds and only five medals, Norwegians plundered these Games for nine golds, six silvers and five bronzes - a total that will put the sparsely populated country fourth in the final tally, just behind Germany, the Unified Team and Austria.
If this was Norway's tuneup for Lillehammer in 1994, watch out world.
With one day to go in the Games, Germany clinched the medals race with 26, including 10 golds. Twenty of the medals, including eight gold, came from former East Germans, four from former West Germans. One gold and one silver came from cross-country relay teams with athletes from both sides.
In 1988, East Germany won 25 medals, four fewer than the Soviet Union's record total, while West Germany finished fifth with eight medals.
"Two former countries came together and became one good team," said Christian Neuthreuter, once a slalom skier for West Germany in three Olympics.
Ricco Gross, one of three former East Germans with former West German Fritz Fischer on the winning biathlon relay, said: "It proves that all the tensions can be overcome. We no longer see whether Fritz wins, we only see a German teammate win. That's what's important."
The Unified Team, which goes for the hockey gold medal against Canada, has 22 medals. The Austrian team, whose four-man bobsled team edged the Germans by two hundredths of a second for the gold Saturday, has 21.