Lake Placid

A look at how host countries have fared in total medals in the Winter Olympics, with increase over previous games and the medal leaders for those games, starting in 1960: Year ........... Host site ........Host country/ .................Medals..........Change .............................................Medal leader 1960 ...........Squaw Valley .....United States.......................10 ...........+3 ..............................................Soviet Union .......................

LAKE PLACID, N.Y. - An apparent drunken-driving accident Monday afternoon ended what was expected to be one of the feel-good stories of the Winter Olympics. Jack Shea, who won two gold medals in speed skating at the 1932 Winter Olympics, died early yesterday from injuries he suffered in a car accident less than a mile from his home. As the senior member of three generations of Winter Olympians - a first - the 91-year-old had become a media star in his hometown, the scene of his athletic triumph.

When a former world champion comes to town and sets a speed record at your track in the opening minutes of a World Cup competition, is it time to fold up the tent? Not if you're Becky Wilczak, a member of the U.S. women's luge squad. "That didn't bother me. It just told me the ice was fast," said Wilczak of the 44.021-second run by Germany's Sonja Wiedemann. Wiedemann, the 1999 world champion, had a two-race total time of 1:28.981 in Lake Placid, N.Y., that was good for the gold medal.

With slightly more than two months remaining before the start of the Winter Olympics, athletes are deep into the competitions that will determine who will go to Salt Lake City. Also on the way to Utah is the Olympic torch, which was lighted Monday in Olympia, Greece, the site of the first Games, and will reach the United States on Dec. 4. The flame will be carried through 46 states - with a stop in Baltimore on Dec. 22 - by 11,500 volunteers, each of whom will carry the torch two-tenths of a mile.

If you've been fascinated by the Robert Hanssen spy case, here's a vacation for you: Former CIA, FBI and KGB intelligence officers and spy catchers will divulge tricks of their trade to cruise- goers aboard the Regal Empress' SpyCruise through the Bahamas next spring. During the day, guests can attend lectures about wartime espionage, double agents and moles. There will also be demonstrations of actual spy equipment. In the evening, guests will be joined at dinner by former intelligence officers, who will talk about celebrated spy cases and the art of counterintelligence.

TO MANY RESIDENTS, we've had enough snow this year, thank you. But not Michael Hubenthal, who recently traveled to New York to look for more. Hubenthal, a geologist and eighth-grade science teacher at Northwest Middle School, has returned from a research trip to Lake Placid, N.Y., where he joined 16 teachers and three scientists from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to study frozen waterfalls. "Winter Camp 2001 - Pole to Pole," the official name of the research program, is a partnership among Northwood School in Lake Placid, NASA and Blue Ice International, a nonprofit research organization.

SALT LAKE CITY - The Winter Olympics are almost here, and you can feel the excitement growing. What a wonderful opportunity to meet foreigners, sample their culture, learn their language. And that's just the locals, not the international crowd. Just wait until you meet your first Mormon and begin conversing in Utahnics, the native tongue. Barter with them for official Olympic pins, and the funkier unsanctioned versions. Take a breath of air, but not too deep if you don't want the car exhaust to overwhelm you. Enjoy the city's mountain backdrop, but don't dally because a temperature inversion can dump a smog blanket over the landscape faster than Ray Lewis can smother a running back.

YOU RECALL, no doubt, the piece here three Sundays ago about Ryan Harrigan, the 13-year-old soap-box car racer waiting to hear if he'll be selected for the next national level of training in luge - competitive sledding. But if someone asked what a columnist on amateur athletics in Howard County, Md., would never write about, luge would be right there. Ditto bobsledding. Today, meet Courtney Zgraggen, Ellicott City resident since August, Mount Hebron High School freshman, JV soccer goalkeeper, bobsled driver.

FROM JUST SOUTH of U.S. 29 and Route 32, here's an Olympic dream that's in its earliest scenes but has one of the more accidental starts you'll ever hear. Ryan Harrigan, a seventh-grader at Lime Kiln Middle School in Fulton who turns 13 on Thursday, races soapbox cars. He's good. So his father, Mike, was fishing the Internet for a suit of high-tech fabric that might clip .005 of a second off Ryan's best time in soapbox car racing when he stumbled onto what could become his older son's real sport - luge.

Some friends and I recently played in a lacrosse tournament. Our Atlantic Sportswear team was a long-term project, put together to pursue one goal, the Lake Placid Summit Tournament. We weren't the favorite to win. Our championship-game opponent was the top-seeded defending champ, with a lot more guys who had big reputations from their bygone college days. In sports as in investing, however, you learn from your setbacks and keep working toward your goals. Losses show what is necessary for success.