Winter Olympics

Donald M. Wallace woke up yesterday morning confident that it was the first day of his Olympic training. He pulled on a pair of jeans and a red fleece shirt, and set his leather cowboy hat just so on his head. Slipping a flask of scotch in his pocket, he headed out to the slick new National Capital Curling Center in Laurel. His pronouncement was definitive after an hour on the ice: "I'm going to be in the Olympics. I'm Scottish, and curling is in my blood, so this feels like the culmination of millions of years of evolution.

The thought of Americans at the top of the mountain at the XVI Winter Olympics is heady and strange. Still, Americans may have more to cheer about than ever before.The sweeping political thawing in Eastern Europe and elimination of its government-aided sports programs, coupled with the U.S. Olympic Committee's increased financial support of its winter sports, may result in a U.S. record medal count in Albertville, France."I want to be able to leave here saying we came, we saw, we conquered," said Alpine skier AJ Kitt, the first American to win a World Cup race since 1984.

CESANA PARIOL, Italy -- Hometown boy made good. In the biting mountain cold, Armin Zoeggeler, the reigning Olympic luge champion, warmed Italian hearts last night, winning his country's first gold medal of these Winter Games. As a raucous partisan crowd cheered, rang bells and danced, Zoeggeler held off Russia's Albert Demtschenko, winning all four races with a combined time of 3 minutes, 26.088 seconds. "I still don't believe that I won the medal," said Zoeggeler, who also has silver and bronze Olympic medals.

NAGANO, Japan -- Todd Eldredge began this journey as a kid in hockey skates on Cape Cod in Massachusetts. He liked to spin and jump, and soon, he followed a coach and a dream across America.He followed his coach, Richard Callaghan, through rinks in Philadelphia, San Diego, Colorado Springs, Colo., and Detroit. He rehearsed two decades for this one moment that was supposed to end in gold.Instead, Eldredge finished the 1998 Winter Olympics in failure yesterday. He was fourth in the men's figure skating final and he was out of the medals.

SALT LAKE CITY - On these quiet, tree-lined streets just south of the University of Utah's campus, the world's races, religions, friends and foes got reacquainted last night. The backdrop, of course, was the opening ceremony of the 2002 Winter Olympics, an event that finally arrived in this city after seven years of planning and billions of dollars of spending. But unlike the polite party inside Rice-Eccles Olympic Stadium that was broadcast around the world, with its fancy lighting and Bob Costas voice-overs, the streets outside were full of unscripted emotion, as thousands from around the world traded pins, patriotism and prejudice.

NAGANO, Japan - Beneath a cypress-roofed Buddhist temple named Zenkoji, pilgrims fumble through a dark passageway, seeking the "Key to Paradise."Those who overcome the underground chill and ages-old fear reach out, touch the padlock and gain eternal salvation.For Japan, the "Key to Paradise" contained in the great temple that looms over this remote, industrial city serves as a symbol of the promise and the peril that is the 1998 Winter Olympics.The promise is that Nagano will connect with the world.

The Olympic caldron will be extinguished in Salt Lake City at the end of the Winter Games Feb. 24, but that doesn't mean they're turning out the lights, too. Unless you have your heart set on the Olympic experience -- and the crowds, hype and tight security that go with it -- visiting Salt Lake City after the Games makes a lot of sense. After the Olympics, you can still take advantage of the millions of dollars of upgrades to the airport, highways and mass transit. You still get to stay in a new hotel or eat at fine restaurants that a few weeks before might have been closed for private parties.

CESANA PARIOL, Italy -- Whether she were to end up in Iraq or Italy, in a war or at peace, Shauna Rohbock decided she would do whatever it took to represent her country in a manner befitting a soldier. Or a bobsled driver. Rohbock, who holds the rank of specialist in the Utah National Guard, managed to do both yesterday at the Winter Olympics on a brisk and occasionally snowy night, piloting USA 1 to a silver-medal finish to finally fulfill her dream and help break what had been an 0-for-6 drought in the medals department for U.S. sliders.

SALT LAKE CITY - The 19th Winter Olympics, barely old enough to have a history, reached back last night and borrowed from one of its greatest memories. The miracle men of the 1980 U.S. hockey team, 20 strong, stood atop the platform of the 117-foot-tall glass-and-steel caldron at Rice-Eccles Olympic Stadium and touched a torch to the bowl to mark the symbolic beginning of the games. The Olympic flame entered the stadium and passed from gold medal hand to gold medal hand, starting with figure skaters Dick Button and Dorothy Hamill and ending with hockey player Cammi Granato and skier Picabo Street.