Home >  Sports >  Olympics

Monday, February 25, 2002

The next Summer Olympics will be Aug. 13-29, 2004, in Athens, Greece. The next Winter Olympics will be Feb. 4-19, 2006, in Turin, in the Piedmont region of northwestern Italy, on the banks of the Po River.

Medal totals for the United States since the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, N.Y.:

The French judge in the middle of the figure skating controversy said she was under pressure from Canada, not her country's federation, before voting for the Russians in the pairs final, The New York Times reported.

Marie-Reine Le Gougne, in an interview from her lawyers' office in Salt Lake City, said that despite the pressure she voted with her "heart and soul." Le Gougne said the lobbying effort was led by senior skating officials from Canada and began in September. "They needed my vote," Le Gougne told the Times. "It was going to be very close. I was in the middle."

Michael Chambers, president of the Canadian Olympic Association, dismissed the claims.

The United States failed to medal in five Olympic sports at the Salt Lake City Games: curling, ski jumping and the three Nordic skiing disciplines.

Police in riot gear used foam-tipped bullets to scatter an unruly crowd outside a downtown beer garden early yesterday on the final weekend of the Winter Games. Twenty people were arrested but no major injuries were reported.

U.S. gold medal figure skater Dorothy Hamill was slightly injured during a rehearsal for last night's Olympic closing ceremonies but still performed. Hamill fell and hit her chin and throat on a stage light Saturday night while skating into an artificial fog bank, University of Utah hospital officials said.

B>The Salt Lake City-area prison inmates sorting glass from trash at a recycling plant for $1 an hour didn't have expectations of getting in on any Winter Olympics action. But then a cardboard box of those coveted blue berets -- the American Olympic Team ones being scalped for up to $120 each -- rolled across the conveyor belt. Larry Redmond snatched them up and stuffed them away.

"You feel like now you've been in the Olympics," Redmond said. "When I get out of [prison], I'll say that I was a waste engineer, helping recycle things for the Olympics." Redmond is not allowed to wear a beret on the job, and was not supposed to keep the souvenirs. But don't tell that to his sister, who soon will be the lucky recipient of the hottest retail item at the Winter Games.

Jacques Rogge, IOC president, on the future of judging events at the Olympics: "We respect totally the federations and their responsibility for staging the sports and assuring the results. But we will discuss with them, where needed, the judging systems. ... We are partners. They run the sports, but these are our games."

While speed skaters were covering themselves in glory, the Utah Olympic Oval was setting an Olympic record of its own. More world records were broken at the Kearns, Utah, track than at any previous Games. World marks fell in eight of 10 events contested during the 12 days of competition, topping the previous high of seven world records at the 1988 Calgary Olympics. One lone world mark remains outside the possession of the world's highest track. Not a single Olympic record was left standing. Skaters also set 193 personal records and 86 national records.