APOLO AND THE SHORT TRACK NATIONALS
It's a good thing that Apolo Ohno is cool. He's in a very strange position, and he's handling it amazingly well.
Ohno, of course, became an international celebrity when he won "Dancing With the Stars." Even winning five Olympic medals wasn't as big in the eyes of the masses as winning a TV dance show.
It showed during the three-day Short Track National Championships at the Olympic Oval in Kearns, Utah; when the bleachers were crowded with fans who paid for tickets just to watch Apolo skate.
"It helps to have a star in your sport. People know Apolo more than they know that Apolo is a speedskater. We've got to fix that," said Chris Weaver, who works for U. S. Speeskating, the federation that controls the sport.
Though he had not raced for nine months, Ohno was the top skater of the Championships: finishing first in both the 1,000 and 1,500 meter distances, and taking second in the 3,000, which was won by Charles Leveille. Ohno finished first with a final minute pass in the 500, but the judges ruled he had skated in front of J. P. Kepka and DQ'd Ohno, giving J. P. Kepka the win.
Near newcomer Katherine Reutter totally dominated the women's field, winning every race. After winning Sunday's final race, the 1,000 meters, Reutter looked entranced. Her face seemed to glow.
She said, "When the bell rang (that signals one lap remains), I was thinking, 'hold on, hold on,' because I was getting tired, and that's where a lot of times people get cocky and stand up too soon."
Short track speedskating is held in a regular sized ice rink, with up to as many as eight skaters moving at 35 miles an hour in a tight line, leaning inward in a defiance of gravity as they go around the curves after a brief straightaway. The strategy of the sport is to redline the inward lean so that no one can pass you, while hanging onto your balance so that you don't fall and go spinning away to crash into the boards. Short track is constant strategy; requiring a hard push from the start before the sound of the start gun even dies away. The skater who gets to the inside lane first will win if he/she can prevent anyone from passing.
The Olympic Oval was it's own reality show during the Championships. The races would determine the team member who would be racing the coming World Cups, and the intensity inside the rink was palpable. There was no ice in the other rink at the Oval. A soccer game was going on over its green carpeted surface. On the long track ribbon of ice that surrounds both rinks, recreational skaters struggled to stay upright. Little kids in puffy jackets and heavy set soccer players in white socks and shorts stood at the walled off boundary at the edge of the short track rink, wondering what was going on.
As Apollo Ohno came off the ice and prepared to go downstairs to the locker rooms, a woman handed him a package. Barbara Hall had come from Arizona to give this gift to the skater, a detailed Ohno scrapbook that she had worked on for two years. Every page was a work of art. Ohno went down the stairs, where journalists were waiting to interview him. On the way, he passed a group of middle aged women wearing red shirts blazoned with the words "un(Apolo)getic."
One of them explained, "It stands for middle aged women with school girl crushes on a certain speed skater. Three of us are from Texas, one from New Jersey, two from Maryland and one from Utah." The youngest of this Apolo fan club is in her late 30's, the oldest is 64.
When asked how he is different now from the slightly punky kid he was back at the 2002 Olympics, the 25-year-old Ohno said, "I think I'm more experienced. Physically, I'm stronger."
And he is not embarrassed by his fame. "Absolutely not! I think it's great. More people watch the sport because of it, and that's a good thing," he said.
Long Track Championships are Dec. 27-30, at the Oval. No one has asked long track stars Shani Davis and Chad Hedrick whether or not they dance.