More gold for U.S. Nordic skiers

Bill Demong made up in gold for both things he had lost in the last three days.

The missing bib number that led to his disqualification -- and that of his teammates -- from the Nordic combined team jumping event Thursday at the world championships in Liberec, Czech Republic.

And the substantial amount of time he lost based on the results of the jumping phase of the individual large hill event this morning.

The result was another gold medal for the astonishing U.S. Nordic combined skiers, giving them three golds (the other two by Todd Lodwick, who returned to the sport last summer after a two-season absence) and a bronze (Demong) at the 2009 worlds.

"Everything did come together the way we envisioned it. It's more validation because we always thought these results were possible," U.S. Nordic combined coach Dave Jarrett said.

Those four medals are as many as U.S. teams in all Nordic disciplines had won in all the previous  worlds added together.  Nordic combined skiers Demong (2007, silver) and Johnny Spillane (gold, 2003) had accounted for half those earlier medals.

"Todd coming back has made a huge impact on our team,'' said Demong, 28, of Lake Placid, N.Y.  "To have a teammate be the guy who was unbeatable has been amazing.

"When I think about these championships, I knew going in we could do it, but there's a million ways to have it go. We carried our momentum well and were fighting for the win the entire time."

Demong started the 10-kilometer cross-country phase of the event in eighth place, 52 seconds out of the lead, and he finished with a 12.8-second margin over Bjorn Kircheisen of Germany.  Lodwick, who had won the mass start and small hill events, finished 10th.

"I owed this to them," Demong said, referring to his teammates. "Thursday was rough. After it happened, it was odd, I actually needed my team's support. I really felt that I let them down, so today is dedicated to them.''

-- Philip Hersh

Photo: Bill Demong, left, holds off Bjorn Kircheisen of Germany for the gold today. Credit: Alexander Hassenstein / Getty Images 

Zhang's silver still only half the loaf

Terrific comeback for Caroline Zhang in today's free skate at the World Junior Figure Skating Championships in Sofia, Bulgaria.  With a clean performance, the 15-year-old Californian easily won the free skate and jumped from 10th place to second in the final standings behind Alena Leonova, 18, of Russia.

Problem is, you can't implode in one phase of the event, as Zhang did in Friday's short program, and hope to be a medal threat on the senior level.

Just ask the second U.S. finisher at junior worlds, Ashley Wagner, who was third overall.  Were it not for a 12th place in the short program at January's U.S. Championships, Wagner's winning performance in the free skate at nationals could have been good enough to put her on the U.S. team for the upcoming senior worlds in Los Angeles.

Or Elene Gedevanishvili of Georgia, who gave away a 13-point short program lead over Zhang with a sloppy, 11th-place free skate today and fell to sixth from first.

Consistency is what makes great skaters -- and Olympic medalists.  Even with the new judging system, a skater can't expect very bad to be offset by almost brilliant -- except in a field like that at world juniors, which Zhang should have beaten with no problem.

No wonder she reacted with little emotion to the end of her excellent free skate, which must have left her feeling mainly relieved.

Best thing about what Zhang did today was end the season on a high note, including getting full credit for her triple flip-triple toe jump combination, one of the few Zhang triple-triples over the last two seasons that has not been downgraded.  That should spur her to work on the ungainly takeoffs on two pick jumps, the under-rotated jumps and the overall lack of speed that have slowed her progress from world junior champion in 2007 to consistent senior -- and, therefore, Olympic medal contender.

She leaves the junior ranks (presumably for good, although Zhang is age eligible for a few more seasons) with the distinction of having won three world championship medals: gold, silver, silver.  Several others have won three junior medals, but no woman in the 31-year history of the event has done as well as Zhang.

-- Philip Hersh

Photo: Caroline Zhang exults after her free skate at the Four Continents Championship in early February.  Her reaction to another strong effort today was more muted.  Credit: Paul Chiasson / The Canadian Press

Vonn moves onto Picabo's street again

Another day, another career achievement for Lindsey Vonn.

This one will be special to the 24-year-old Minnesotan because it puts again her in the company of her childhood ski idol, Picabo Street.

Today in Bulgaria, despite a modest 12th-place finish in a World Cup downhill race won by Austria's Andrea Fischbacher, Vonn clinched a second straight season title in the downhill. Only other U.S. skier to do that?  Street in 1995-96.

A year ago, Vonn topped Street as the U.S. skier with most career World Cup downhill wins.

Vonn had finished in the top three in the previous five World Cup races, giving her a firm grip on a second straight overall title.  She has a 336-point lead over Maria Riesch of Germany with seven races left.

Vonn also is in contention for the season titles in slalom and Super-G, although she would need a collapse by Riesch in the final two slaloms to have a shot at that crown.

-- Philip Hersh

Photo: Lindsey Vonn carves her way to a second straight World Cup downhill season title today in Bansko, Bulgaria. Credit: Marco Trovati / Associated Press

Uhlaender now has time to grieve

Katie Uhlaender of Breckenridge, Colo., ended the women's World Cup skeleton standings third overall, a terrific achievement under any circumstances and one that marks her as a medal contender in the Vancouver Olympics.

Her placement is especially praiseworthy because she competed much of the season knowing that her father, former Major League outfielder Ted Uhlaender, was seriously ill. He died Feb. 12 of multiple myeloma just before she won a silver medal in the final World Cup race of the season.

On Friday she finished seventh in the skeleton World Championships at Lake Placid, N.Y., and hugged her brothers immediately after the race.

"This season was probably one of the hardest seasons I've had to deal with, and this race was the first reality that my father is gone because he never would have missed this race," Uhlaender told officials of the U.S. Bobsled and Skeleton Federation.

"I screwed up the first heat yesterday because I felt like he was going to show up and I looked up and he wasn't there. Then I broke down."

Two of her brothers, Scott and Will, stood by her side as she spoke to the media.

"It helped to have my brothers here," she said. "I think I'm more excited for next season because I know that's what my dad was focused on."

She said she will return to the family's farm in Atwood, Kan., to help sort through her father's belongings.

"I'd like to go home to rest and mourn," she said. "It's only been two weeks, and it's hard knowing that he's not going to be back."

Germany's Marion Trott won the women's world title at the Lake Placid track with a combined time of 3 minutes, 47.97 seconds. Trott also was the World Cup champion.

--Helene Elliott

Rulon Gardner to visit Olympic Training Center

Rulon Gardner, whose upset victory in Greco-Roman wrestling at the 2000 Sydney Games remains one of the most stunning feats in Olympic history, will visit the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista on Saturday from 11 a.m.-1 p.m.

Gardner, who also won a bronze medal in Athens in 2004, is a great storyteller and inspirational speaker. He's going to be signing copies of his book "Never Stop Pushing."

The training center will also be offering a tour of the facility, and that's very worthwhile. Athletes in all sports train there -- even winter athletes visit for conditioning purposes -- and you get a sense of how hard they work and how much sweat lies behind their dreams. The tour will start at 10:30 a.m.

For more information, check out this website or call (619) 656-1500.

-- Helene Elliott

Caroline Zhang shows she wasn't the answer

To all of you so outraged after both the national championships and the Four Continents Championship because U.S. Figure Skating did not put Caroline Zhang on the team for next month’s senior World Championships:

Were you watching (as I was) the icenetwork.com coverage of the short program at the World Junior Championships Friday morning in Sofia, Bulgaria, where Zhang fell on her first jump, seemingly lost interest and wound up 10th?

If you were, it should be clear -- as I had pointed out -- that it was illogical to assume a world team of Zhang and Rachael Flatt would do better than the team resulting from the top two at the U.S. Championships: Alissa Czisny and Flatt. (Zhang was third at nationals.)

At stake is the number of spots in the women’s field at the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver. Based on performances this season, I have written several times that it was very unlikely any two U.S. women could do well enough at the 2009 worlds (finishes adding up to 13 or fewer, such as sixth and seventh, or fourth and ninth, etc.) to secure three Olympic spots.

The problem is, other than Flatt, none of the current group of U.S. women has shown any consistency, and even Flatt struggled at Four Continents.

So here was Zhang, fresh off a solid fourth at Four Continents in a field in which the top three finishers could also be the top three at worlds. And then, to put it simply, she fell apart.

Her short program score, 47.64, was the lowest Zhang has recorded in a short program at an international event since her debut, on the Junior Grand Prix, in 2006. The two previous lows, 51.76 and 53.28, came at senior Grand Prix events this season.

Zhang’s technical score Friday was so poor it was beaten by 19 other skaters. Nineteen!

Zhang was world junior champion in 2007 and world junior silver medalist in 2008. Now it will be very surprising for her to win any medal. Such regression raises a lot of questions -- coaching, commitment -- she will need to answer before next season.

Anyone obviously can have a bad day. And because I am a long way from Bulgaria, I do not know if Zhang was ill or had skate problems or anything else that might have dragged her down. (Update: I asked U.S. Figure Skating spokesperson Scottie Bibb today to check on Zhang, and Bibb replied -- after consulting the team leader -- that Zhang was not sick.) And she is still two months from her 16th birthday.

Which brings me back to the start.

This is what I wrote after Czisny, 21, won nationals despite a mediocre long program:

"So, did Czisny get benefit of the doubt from judges who knew it would be good for the sport to have a woman of a certain age rather than a teeny teen as champion? Probably.

"But it's not as if any of her rivals clearly deserved to win any more than she did."

I also came away from nationals with the feeling that a healthy Mirai Nagasu, who staggered into fifth on a bad foot, has the most potential for a high Olympic finish among the current group of U.S. competitors.

Nagasu, the 2008 U.S. champion, has the "look-at-me" quality, the "it" factor, lacking in the others.

But they all are lacking in one area or another. Sadly, Zhang was lacking Friday in many.

-- Philip Hersh

Photo: Caroline Zhang at the Four Continents Championships. Credit: Jonathan Hayward / Associated Press

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

Seattle natives Apolo Anton Ohno, right, and J.R. Celski crash.  (AP / Jeff Roberson)

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

Olympic stumble psyches hurdler Lolo Jones up, not out

Lolo Jones after the 2008 Olympic final in Beijing. Credit: Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times

The Olympic memory stings Lolo Jones now as much as it did then, when it brought the 26-year-old to her hands and knees and left her in tears on the Bird's Nest track after a stumble at the next-to-last high hurdle cost her the gold medal she had been running away with.

Jones still can't bear to watch a replay of the race, but she continues to handle the frustration with the same good nature and grace ("You have to get over all 10 or you're not meant to be champion,'' Jones said immediately after the race) that prompted this letter to the Los Angeles Times last August:

It was so very painful for Lolo Jones and her family and fans when she hit the hurdle while leading the women's 100-meter hurdles. The irony is that had she not faltered, America might have seen her celebrate, but we would never have been treated to the depth of character and genuine decency that she displayed in the face of her personal agony. Ms. Jones is a very special young woman; that's far more important than any medal. -- Kip Dellinger, West Los Angeles

Speaking to reporters Wednesday, as she prepares to defend her U.S. indoor title in the 60-meter hurdles in Boston this weekend, Jones was able to make light of a mishap that undoubtedly has brought her more attention than a gold medal would have among U.S. fans whom NBC force-fed, ad nauseam, a diet of Michael Phelps, gymnastics and beach volleyball.

"I don't think people would remember my name as much if I would have won,'' Jones said, with realism rather than rancor. "Everyone can relate to not getting something they wanted so badly and worked so hard for, whether they are an athlete or working 9-to-5.''

As it has been with so much else in a life of turmoil and rootlessness, a life when her one goal was to "to get out of poverty,'' Jones sees her Olympic fall as just another hurdle to overcome.

"I always have flashbacks from the Olympics,'' she said.  "[Since then], it became therapeutic to me every time I could just drain energy in practice.''

And then, just to make sure no one over-dramatized her words, Jones laughed and added, "Instead of paying for a psychiatrist, I would just go to practice and have a session -- for free.''

It was some consolation that Track & Field News ranked her the world's No. 1 hurdler for 2008, when she won the U.S. Olympic trials, ran the world's two fastest times outdoors (the fastest, 12.43, came in the Olympic semis) and became world indoor champion. She enjoyed hearing herself introduced as No. 1 this winter in Europe, where she has won four or five meets and run the three fastest times in the world.

"I would hear someone being called bronze medalist from Beijing or Olympic champion in Beijing and wondered what they would say about me,'' she said.

Beijing. It won't go away.

"Every race helps, but I'm still getting over it,'' she said.  "I will use it as motivation for the next four years.''

-- Philip Hersh

U.S. Kikkan in Nordic worlds

As a high schooler in Alaska, she earned the nickname "Kikkanimal'' from teammates who found her energy and drive in practice to be almost feral.

Kikkan Randall has channeled that wildness to become the most successful U.S. woman ever in cross-country skiing: first to reach a World Cup podium in early 2007, then first to win a World Cup race 11 months later (video), at the start of the 2007-2008 season.

Tuesday morning, she added another distinction to that resume: first U.S. woman to win a world championship medal in cross-country, a silver in the freestyle sprint at Liberec, Czech Republic.  She finished just six-tenths of a second behind Arianna Follis of Italy in the .8-mile race.

What makes that even more remarkable is that a year ago Randall, 26, was hospitalized with a massive blood clot that easily could have killed her.

"At the end of the season, I was riding high after my World Cup win, feeling invincible, and all of a sudden it was a complete 180,'' Randall said by telephone from Liberec.

"I went from being on top of the world, on track for my goals, to all of a sudden being in a situation where my life could be threatened at any moment.  Fifty percent of the people with blood clots the size of mine, it can go to the lungs and be fatal.  It was definitely a very scary moment.''

The clot ran from her left hip past the knee and sent her to the hospital three times in a month:  once complaining of pack pain, then to clear out the clot that turned out to be the cause of the pain, finally to clear it out a second time because it had re-formed.  (Full details are on her website: "Scary Encounter With a Blood Clot' and "Back to the Hospital With Another Clot.'')

Doctors told Randall the causes could have included long airplane trips, compression of a vein or the chemical properties in birth control pills she was taking.

"It was a perfect storm,'' she said.  "Any one of those factors on its own may have been a cause, but all of them combined certainly added up to the severity of it.''

She took steps to eliminate all the potential causes.  Then, after getting married May 16, missing about six weeks of serious training and taking blood thinners for six months, Randall slowly worked herself back into medal-contending shape as her coach, Erik Flora, reminded her to be patient and concentrate on being ready for worlds.

"I wrote in my log book at the beginning of [last] summer that one of my goals was to win a world championship medal, and it took my breath away every time I looked at it, knowing it was going to be a big challenge,'' Randall said.

Randall is a two-time Olympian whose ninth place at the 2006 Games was best ever for a U.S. woman.  All her best results have come in freestyle, also known as skating style.  The sprint event at the 2010 Olympics is classic style, in which she has just one top 10 finish on the World Cup -- a seventh two years ago.

"I have been working really hard on my classic skiing, especially knowing the Olympics would be a classic sprint,'' she said.  "I have been making small steps forward.  I've got a year to really make it happen, even if it isn't as good a shot as in skate.''

Her medal Tuesday was the first by a U.S. cross-country skier in the world meet since Bill Koch's bronze in 1982.  It gave Team USA five medals in these Nordic worlds -- one more than in all previous world meets combined.  With the championships at the halfway point, the U.S.  still  leads the  gold medal table with three and trails traditional Nordic power Norway just 6-5 in overall medals.

"When I first got into the sport, someone told me it was going to take 10 years to become a world-class athlete, and about 10 years ago, I started year-round training and started formulating my goals,'' she said.   "I think a lot of athletes who have had success here did the same.''

Photo: Kikkan Randall on her way to a world silver medal. Credit: Jens Meyer/ Associated Press

Gymnastics not yet out of fashion for Liukin

Nastia Liukin tries to blend in when she goes to Southern Methodist University for the psychology and philosophy classes she began taking this semester.

That works on the days when she isn't running late so there is no time to change out of her workout clothes. Then, she said, everyone in the classes knows who she is: the 2008 Olympic champion in the women's all-around, the event that can turn gymnasts into icons.

There could be no clothing disguise for her Saturday, when Liukin came to the Sears Centre in Hoffman Estates, Ill., to join such past American Cup champions as Mary Lou Retton, Kerri Strug, Peter Vidmar and Vitaly Scherbo, all of whom had gone on to win Olympic gold.

Dozens of little girls plaintively squealed "Naaaaaastiiiiiiiiiaaaaaah'' in the hope of getting the attention of the young woman in a red blouse and blue jeans who was more of an attraction to them than all the other legends or the gymnasts who competed in the American Cup.

It seemed ironic, then, that Liukin's other recent public appearances have had her wearing not jeans or leotards but glamming it up in the height of fashion. 

BCBG Max Azria chose her as the image book model for the 2009 spring collection because she demonstrated in Beijing "the polished artistry, grace and casual elegance that define the Max Azria aesthetic.'' There are 44 pages of Liukin showing her "refined sensibility'' in poses only a gymnast or dancer likely would be flexible enough to strike.  And unlike many recent Olympic gymnastic champions, the 19-year-old from Texas has the long, lithe body line that designers seek and the Beijing judges liked.

That meant she also was among the glitterati at the recent New York Fashion Week, where Liukin walked the runway in a Max Azria design for the Heart Truth Red Dress collection.

"I was nervous walking a runway with heels because I didn't want to fall,'' Liukin said. "But someone told me, `If you can walk on a (balance) beam, you can walk on a runway.' ''

While she has been reveling in the whirlwind of spoils that followed her five-medal performance in Beijing, included a long-awaited first trip to Paris, Liukin made it sound as if she can't wait to be spending more time on the beam. She is back to five or six hours a day in the Plano, Texas, gym where she is coached by her father, Valeri -- but  those days lately have often been few and far between.

"I'm a little frustrated because of all the travel,'' she said. "I want to get back to where I was. I'll be back for a few weeks and think I'm progressing and then be gone from a Sunday to Wednesday.

"I'm busy every weekend from now to mid-April. I'm trying to stay in shape, but it's hard with so many obligations.''

Go to her website, and you will see them. There are 15 sponsors listed on the home page.  The site's visitor count as of Monday?  More than 11 million.

She did make it to one of the January national team training camps at the Karolyi Ranch outside Houston. That appearance left national team coordinator Martha Karolyi impressed by the attitude Liukin brought.

"She was the first to do all the little exercises, warm-up exercises, everything,'' Karolyi said. "She didn't think even the smallest thing was beneath her. This is the spirit she showed to the others.''

Liukin said she still finds it weird to hear the "two words'' -- Olympic champion -- that now are attached to her name. "The images start to replay in my head and I wonder, `Did that really happen?' '' she said.

Liukin's goal is to compete in August's U.S. Championships in Dallas, where she will be trying to qualify for the October world championships in London. Beyond that, her competitive future is unclear, even if the post-Olympic changes in the scoring system that emphasize artistry should work to her advantage, especially on floor exercise and balance beam.

"Gymnastics is still my priority,'' she said.  "As much as I am traveling, I try to keep it to the minimum.  I am so anxious to get back into competition.''

-- Philip Hersh

Photos: Above, Nastia Liukin in a dress from the Max Azria spring collection. Credit: BCBG Max Azria Group. Below, Liukin on the runway at New York Fashion Week. Credit: AP / Bebeto Matthews