Dan Jansen

HAMAR, Norway -- She saw the ice chips fly, saw her husband touch down with his hand, saw another gold medal slip away on a tight turn.Robin Jansen, dressed in black, could take no more. The crowd was still screaming, but she pivoted away even before her husband, Dan, crossed the finish line. She hugged her brother-in-law Jim. And then, she placed her baby into her mother's lap and headed for the exit."Why God? Why again?" she said. "God cannot be that cruel."Yesterday, six years to the day his sister died and he fell in grief, Dan Jansen, a haunted man, lost again.

MILWAUKEE -- Since so few other speed skaters can beat her, Bonnie Blair found that to push herself to greater feats, she'd have to compete against herself."

Enough on Dan JansenEnough on Dan JansenIn all the crying and commiserating about Dan Jansen, did it ever occur to anyone that he just isn't good enough to get a medal?A beloved sister's death four years ago surely wouldn't hinder a Japanese, German or Norwegian skater. Enough already.Alice AndersonOcean City, Md.Season ticket gripesAs a loyal Orioles season ticket holder since 1984, I am very pleased with my seat selection for the upcoming season. I am only able to purchase a 13 game Sunday package because I live 200 miles away.

ALBERTVILLE, France -- These were the Winter Olympics of politics and pressure. You could barely take a step without bumping into an athlete whose story was somehow intertwined with a country rising, falling or merging. And everywhere, as much a constant as snow in the mountains, there was pressure.The Olympics are always about pressure, of course. These athletes practice four years for defining moments that often last less than a minute. It's twisted logic impossible to reconcile, and it can shatter when joined by the burden of expectation.

Chris Schenkel, who will be in town to cover the Professional Bowlers Tour stop here on ABC Saturday, let the conversation drift back to the days when he and television first got involved with the Winter Olympics."

She would never forget the call from Canada. On a day of grief and loss, she would always have this moment, this conversation with a son who was shaken and uncertain.Should he race?For him, mourning the death of a sister, the question was wrenching. For his mother, though, there could be only one answer. Jane had died, and there was nothing anyone could do, now.So, of course, she told her son to try.No one said anything about winning. This was the Olympics, wasn't it? This is what he had worked toward for four years.

CBS is going to preview the Winter Olympics, which begin Feb. 8, with a two-hour show beginning at 8 p.m. next Thursday. One thing, it will give viewers a chance to see if co-hosts Paula Zahn and Tim McCarver are up to the assignment of being welcome guests in our TV rooms for a long two weeks.Both are congenial, but, on pre-Olympic shows, haven't been terribly smooth trying to act at home talking about sports they were mostly oblivious to a few short months ago. The network is taking a big gamble, especially considering it has two hosts who can handle anything, Jim Nantz and Greg Gumbel.

Skier Koch becomes Olympian for 4th timeBill Koch, 36, became a four-time Olympian yesterday after a bizarre concluding day at the U.S. Cross Country Skiing Championships in Biwabik, Minn. John Aalberg of won the men's 30-kilometer freestyle race. Koch placed ninth to finish in a tie for seventh under the point system used to select the Olympic team.But the 1982 World Cup champion, who 16 years ago in Innsbruck, Austria, became the only U.S. athlete to claim an Olympic medal in cross-country, had to wait about two hours after the race before a complicated points calculation and an appeal of an earlier disqualification were resolved.