Skiing

MEET KEVIN GARNETT Kevin Garnett of the Minnesota Timberwolves is Mr. Everything. The forward led the T-wolves in scoring (20.8 points per game), rebounds (10.4) and blocks (1.77) last season. Kevin is just as hot in the 1999-2000 season. He is currently averaging 21.3 points per game. Now Kevin, age 23, wants an NBA title. "I've become hungrier about wanting to win," says Kevin. Mr. Everything is ready to take a big bite out of the competition this season. WHAT'S THE CALL? GATE GAFFE SAMMY SNOWFLAKE IS BLAZING down the mountain in a youth slalom skiing race.

For once, Matt and his sister agreed. It's too bad they were agreeing to leave me in their dust."Come on, Mom! You're too slow!" 13-year-old Matt said impatiently."

LILLEHAMMER, Norway -- Elizabeth McIntyre had just shared the moment of her life with the world in the 1994 Winter Olympics, and hardly anyone knew her name.Or her game."Just call me Lisa," said McIntyre.And the sport? MTV on ice, right?"Hey, get real," said McIntyre to one reporter. "A lot of people find things ridiculous that I don't. But as long as I enjoy it and find it challenging, then I'm going to take it seriously."McIntyre, with 25.89 points, won a silver medal yesterday in the women's freestyle skiing moguls, finishing behind Norway's Stine Lise Hattestad, who had 25.97.

A good part about leaving town is that for a few days the tribe is not stomping through the house breaking things. The only house part that broke, for example, during the recent week our clan was up in Massachusetts and Vermont, was the water faucet in our Baltimore backyard. The faucet simply fell off the water pipe it was connected to. I suspect fatigue, a condition I identify with.A bad part about going away with your family is the car trip. After an extended period of family togetherness, such as the 500-mile drive we recently completed, I am now ready for an extended period of family apart-ness.

Short track APOLO OHNO TV: NBC, Noon-6 p.m. and 8-11:30 p.m. -- Apolo Ohno of Seattle is favored in tonight's 1,000 meters, but anything can happen in short-track speed skating. He also was favored four years ago in Salt Lake City. But all four of the frontrunners, including Ohno, were involved in a crash that wiped them out. The only man standing at the finish was Australia's Steven Bradbury, whose strategy had been to hang back and hope that something bad happened to the skaters in front of him. It was short-track speed skating's version of the tortoise and the hare.

NATIONAL Protest commemorates war On the fourth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, as many as 20,000 people spilled into the heart of the nation's capital in a sometimes tense demonstration that reflected a deepening anger on both sides of the war debate. pg 3A Bush, religious right clash Supreme Court case about the free-speech rights of high school students, to be argued tomorrow, has opened an unexpected fissure between the Bush administration and its usual allies on the religious right.

Louis D. Blom, a retired National Security Agency analyst and a World War II veteran, died of complications from dementia Oct. 28 at the Charlestown retirement community. He was 84. Mr. Blom, the son of a steelworker and a librarian, was born in Corona, N.Y., and raised in Baker, La. After graduating from Baker High School in 1941, where he had been an outstanding football player, Mr. Blom enlisted in the Army Air Forces. Trained as a radio operator and top-turret gunner, Mr. Blom flew 38 combat missions in Europe aboard bombers.

OGDEN, Utah - Over the past decade or so, the world has watched Picabo Street laugh, cry, crash and soar. Today, it will watch her take a final curtain call. Whether she does it with a medal around her neck will be up to Street, who is retiring from competitive skiing after these Olympics. She isn't the favorite to win the women's downhill today, but if there is one thing Street has proved in the past, it's that betting against her is a bad idea. "Anything can happen in a downhill," said Street, 30. "If God blesses me with another medal, then thank you, Lord.

You missed Salt Lake, and the weak dollar puts Turin, Italy, out of your price range next year. What's a Winter Olympics fan to do? Go to Lake Placid, N.Y., next month and relive the magic of 1980. The village of 2,600 tucked in the Adirondack Mountains is having a festival Feb. 12-27 to mark the silver anniversary of the 1980 Winter Games that includes activities at all of the original venues. Skate the outdoors rink where Eric Heiden won all five speed skating events. Cheer in the arena where a hockey "miracle" happened.

Skiing is an exciting winter sport, but it is not for everybody. For example, it is not for sane people. Sane people look at skiing, and they say: "Wait a minute. I'm supposed to attach slippery objects to my feet and get on a frozen chair dangling from a scary-looking wire; then get dumped off on a snow-covered slope so steep that the mountain goats are wearing seat belts; and then, if by some miracle I am able to get back down without killing myself, I'm supposed to do this again??"As I get older -- which I am currently doing at the rate of about 5 years per year -- this is more and more how I view skiing.