Figure skating’s long night, Sasha’s goal not gold, bob(sledd)ing and weaving...and more

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A few of the pithiest quotes I’ve heard in recent weeks and some of my pithy (I hope) opinions, as well.

‘It rains so much we have to do some kind of indoor stuff,’Olympic gold medalist Apolo Anton Ohno, explaining why the nation’s top two short-track male speedskaters, he and J.R. Celski, come from Seattle.

And second prize is one winter trip to Sofia, Bulgaria: Several U.S. figure skaters have made their second trip in a row to Sofia for the World Junior Championships. The event wound up back in Sofia this week after organizational problems forced the International Skating Union to move it from the original site: Ostrava, Czech Republic. Among the double trippers: Adam Rippon, 19, of Scranton, Pa., a runaway winner (nearly 19 points) of a second straight junior world title Thursday with a total score, 222.0, that makes him the 10th best performer in the world on any level this season.

‘When I first came out this year, I could see what I was doing, and that actually made it a little harder. I was driving by seeing and not by feel,’ U.S. bobsledder Steve Holcomb, who won a two-man bronze medal Sunday at the World Championships, on the surgery (implantable collamer lens) that he said improved his vision from 20/500 to 20/20 in 10 minutes.

Not a Nordic power yet: Lest anyone get carried away by the five medals U.S. athletes have won at the Nordic ski world championships, look at the results of everyone but the four medalists. Only one cross-country skier other than silver medalist Kikkan Randall has made the top 10 (a fourth by Kris Freeman); the relays finished 13th (men) and 14th (women) in fields of 15 entries each; and the leading men’s ski jumper (only one event contested so far) was 48th.

‘I stripped my suit all the way down to my ankles,’ said U.S. Nordic combined skier Bill Demong on the futile search for his numbered bib before the jumping phase of Thursday’s team event at the Nordic worlds. After he (and thus the team) was disqualified, Demong found the bib had slid into his boot.

Third time’s the charm? Jeremy Bloom was a terrific kick returner (led Big 12 in return yards in 2004) who was cut by the Eagles in 2007 and the Steelers in 2008. He was a terrific moguls skier (world champion in 2003) who finished ninth and sixth in his two Winter Olympic appearances. With the 2010 Olympics in mind, Bloom returned to World Cup competition last month after a three-year absence, but he is, unsurprisingly, not back in good enough form to be on the U.S. team for next week’s Freestyle World Championships on the 1998 Olympic hill in Japan.

‘I wasn’t trying just to get an A on a paper. I was trying to have the best paper ever written,’ U.S. high hurdler Lolo Jones on why she didn’t run conservatively in the Olympic final, when she was a prohibitive favorite but finished seventh after stumbling over the penultimate barrier.

How to kill a sport in several easy lessons: Scheduled ending times for the upcoming World Figure Skating Championships in Los Angeles, another stroke of genius by the International Skating Union. Tuesday, March 24, pairs short program, 11:40 p.m; Wednesday, March 25, pairs free skate, 11 p.m.; Friday, March 27, free dance, 11 p.m. Hey, ISU numbskulls: That’s 2 a.m. on the East Coast of Canada and the United States and even late in Los Angeles, given its notorious traffic at all hours. Maybe if the ISU limited the fields (there may be 50 men singles skaters, about half of whom need double runners), the program would end at a reasonable hour.

‘I’m definitely not coming back because I feel like I need an Olympic gold. I would be coming back because I feel like I have more to give,’ Olympic silver medalist Sasha Cohen on why she is considering a return to competitive skating.

Burning up the track at both ends: U.S. track cyclist Taylor Phinney, 18, recently won the pursuit and kilometer events at a World Cup meet in Copenhagen, which the French sports newspaper L’Equipe compared to a runner winning the steeplechase and 400 meters. Olympic kilometer champion Florian Rousseau of France called Phinney’s achievement unique, in that the kilo takes explosiveness and power, while the pursuit, four times as long, demands endurance. Phinney was seventh in pursuit at the Olympics, where he was two years younger than any of the other seven finalists.

‘I’ve changed the word from ‘expectations’ to ‘belief’; people expect me to do so well because they believe that I can,‘’ Katherine Reutter of Champaign, the leading woman on the U.S. short track team headed to Vienna for next week’s world championships, on how working with a sports psychologist has helped her handle pressure created by her international success this season.

-- Philip Hersh