The best of times, the worst of times
By Mike DeArmond/Knight Ridder Newspapers
 Media Credit: Damon Winter/Dallas Morning News Dancers perform during the Closing Ceremony of the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics in Rice-Eccles Olympic Stadium in Salt Lake City, Utah Sunday.
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SALT LAKE CITY � Sarah Hughes stood there, floated there really, with a gold medal draped around her neck so heavy that it barely moved when she did. Michelle Kwan stood there, seemingly wearing concrete boots, with a plastic gold medal draped around her neck so inconsequential that it bounced with every sobbing breath Kwan took.
Women's figure skating, as it so often does in the Winter Olympics, provided both the feel-good and the feel-bad moments of the Games of Salt Lake City.
"She got her picture on the front page of her high school newspaper this morning," said John Hughes, the father of 16-year-old Sarah. "For a teen-age kid, that's a pretty big deal."
She got her picture on the front page of every newspaper in America. For anyone, that's a pretty big deal. And the thing was, Sarah Hughes deserved it. She did the toughest long program in the history of women's figure skating. She skated it with more joy than any woman in the history of figure skating.
Her eyes were wide open and screaming "Look at me!" and out of her mouth came the music of her heart.
"It really just felt magical," she said. "I didn't want it to end. It was so wonderful."
Kwan, now seemingly forever a melancholy ice princess who never ascended to the throne of queen, stood there a heart-wrenching counterpoint in bronze, the medal that hung heavily beneath the plastic gold given her by a caring Dorothy Hamill.
Figure skating coach Robin Wagner, stepping away for a compassionate moment apart from the celebration of her pupil, Hughes, walked up to Kwan in the hallways of the Salt Lake Ice Center.
"Regardless of what happened tonight," Wagner said softly to Kwan, "you will always be a champion."
Kind words, but words Kwan cannot yet appreciate, despite her four world titles, her six U.S. national titles. Once silver, once bronze, but never golden in the Olympics; that is Kwan's reality.
"My goal was to leave a mark in skating," Kwan said.
She already has. But just now, Michelle Kwan doesn't feel that. Perhaps, sadly, she never will.
If these, pardon the purloining of the phrase, were the best of Olympic times and the worst of Olympic times, then what were the others to fill out an arbitrary top and bottom?
Simply the best:
Best No. 2
Chris Witty's battle back from mononucleosis to win, in world record time, the women's 1,000-meter long-track speedskating gold medal was testament to the human will. It happened to be an American achievement, but it transcended nationalities.
"The last four weeks I had to be cautious and listen to my body," Witty said. "But this last week I had to forget about that and just skate.
"Some days I'd wake up and I'd be fresh. And then other days I'd wake up and wouldn't want to do anything. I'd come to the rink and maybe skate two laps or three laps."
The world record was a shock.
"If I was healthy," Witty said, "that time would have been a surprise."
Best No. 3
Diversity is a buzz world for American culture. It too often seems a forced ideal. But on an athletic stage where the face of the competitors is so overwhelmingly pure white, the color of a medal-winner's skin and the diversity of cultural and genetic heritage flowed naturally.
The gold medal for women's bobsled went so well with the brown face of American brake-woman Vonetta Flowers. Plucked from track and field, the striking young woman from Birmingham, Ala., gave it her all in a sport to which she was barely introduced. And that included the full measure of her loyalty, when the driver of the top U.S. sled, Jean Racine, tried to steal her from USA II driver Jill Bakken, two days before the competition.
"The conversation lasted about four minutes," Flowers said. "I told her no."
There was Apolo Anton Ohno, of Japanese-American heritage, in short track. And there were Jennifer Rodriguez and Derek Parra, of Hispanic-American stock, each double-medal winners in long-track speedskating.
"We are mirror images of the people around us," Parra said, not realizing, perhaps, the depth that statement plumbed in the melting pot of America.
Or perhaps, he did.
"It shows anything is possible," Parra said, "no matter where you come from."
Best No. 4
There was room enough in what were obviously � by the all-time high of 34 U.S. Winter Olympic medals � the American Games, for those come from foreign lands.
Of those, none was more successful than Croatian skier Janica Kostelic, who with three gold medals and a silver, set an Olympic record for hardware at a single Games but never lost a self-depreciating perspective.
"I don't expect my life to change," she said. "I'm going to be a little more famous. But I'm going to ski, and I'm going to keep my friends."
Of Kostelic, Switzerland's Sonja Nef said: "I wonder if she's human."
Of Australia's Steven Bradbury, there was no doubt.
Bradbury won his country's first-ever Winter Olympic gold medal in the infamous everybody-else fell final of the 1,000 meters of short track. He charmed the world. And then he wagged a finger in front of its face, making the world laugh.
"The next Olympics?" Bradbury said.
"Four more years?
"I'll have a big belly from drinking so much beer."
Best No. 5
For so many years, too many years, U.S. bobsled has been the bad joke no one could forget. Flowers and Bakken ended that in the women's first chance. Todd Hayes and his four-man team, and Brian Shimer and his four-man team, silver and bronze, ended 46 years of the tittering nightmare.
"I don't know how this happened," said Shimer, who had come close but never was on the podium in four previous Olympics. "Sixteen years, and this is all I ever dreamed for. As far as I'm concerned, that bronze is as shiny as gold."
Simply the worst:
Worst No. 2
After Kwan's personal descent � actually before it � there was Skategate. The judging controversy � did the French judge swap her vote for the Russian pair to gain a gold medal for the French ice dancers? Who knew what, and when did they know it? And what will become of it all?
At first, head of the International Skating Union, Ottavio Cinquanta, said: "I do not have the power to change the result."
Then Cinquanta � under pressure from the International Olympic committee � found that power. Canadian pair David Pelletier and Jamie Sale were given duplicate gold medals to match the ones the judges voted Russians Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze on the final night of the competition.
Quoting Pelletier, his lawyer, Craig Fenech, maintained: "'I don't have to have the gold medal, but I want the truth to come out.'"
Now that the Games have closed, that may or may not ever happen. The odds appear about as good as the passage of the new scoring system Cinquanta later proposed, which few people in figure skating anticipate will ever be implemented.
Worst No. 3
How did the Russians, the South Koreans, the Japanese, the Canadians spell win? With an "h" and an "e." To whine became nearly an official sport at these Games.
The Russians said the world was against them and for Canadians and Americans. The South Koreans complained about a disqualification of one of their short-track skaters, the Japanese did the same. The Canadians, of course, lobbied for and received the extra set of gold medals for Pelletier and Sale.
For too many days, it wasn't whether you won or lost but whether you could make Olympic officials so sick of your complaints that they would give in just to shut you up.
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