U.S. short track speedskaters long on success

The U.S. women's short track speedskating team made history by earning a first-place team classification at the last World Cup event of the season, a first for the women.

Champions for the women at the event in Dresden, Germany, were Kimberly Derrick of Memphis, Tenn., in the 1,000 and the women's 3,000-meter relay team. Katherine Reutter of Champaign, Ill., won silver medals in the 1,000 and 1,500.

Among the men, J.R. Celski of Federal Way, Wash. -- a recent graduate of Lakewood High -- won the 1,500 and was second in the 1,000, and Anthony Lobello of Tallahassee, Fla., was second in the 500.

The men were ranked second in the team classification even though Apolo Anton Ohno didn't compete in the last two World Cup events and Jordan Malone of Denton, Texas, was pulled from the competition because of an injury.

Next up is the short track world championships in Vienna in two weeks.

-- Helene Elliott

Photo: Kimberly Derrick. Credit: Scott Rovak-US PRESSWIRE

California is a speed skating hotbed

Three speed skaters from Southern California were selected to the 2009 U.S. World team, and those three, plus Maria Garcia of Carson, were chosen for the 2009 U.S. World Cup team. The announcements were made following competition last weekend at the U.S. short track speed skating championships in St. Louis.

All are affiliated with Southern California Speed Skating, a very active and successful program that gets kids involved in the sport. Among its most notable products is Rusty Smith of Sunset Beach, a 2002 Olympic bronze medalist in the 500 meters and 2006 bronze medalist in the 5,000-meter relay.

JR Celski, a Lakewood High graduate; Jeff Simon of Lakewood and Jordan Malone of Long Beach made the U.S. World Team. Those three skaters and Garcia -- a 2006 Olympian -- made the World Cup team. Celski, Simon and Malone finished 2-3-4 in the men's competition, while Garcia was sixth overall among the women.

The next two World Cup events are in Bulgaria and Germany in early February. The World Championships will take place March 6-8 in Vienna and the World Team Championships will be held March 14-15 in the Netherlands.

Southern California Speed Skating welcomes anyone who would like to try the sport for the first time. More information is available at www.socalspeedskating.org or www.santaclaritaspeedskating.org or www.demorra.com

-- Helene Elliott

Photo: Maria Garcia. Credit: USOC

Speedskater Jennifer Rodriguez gives U.S. team a lift

Finally, some good news for the U.S. women's speedskating team.

Call it a blast from the past.

Jennifer Rodriguez, who returned to the sport this season after a two-year retirement, on Saturday won the first individual World Cup medal by a U.S. woman since ... Rodriguez's last World Cup medal on Dec. 9, 2005.

It's not just any medal, either.

Rodriguez won the 1,000 meters in the meet on the 1998 Olympic rink in Nagano, Japan. She followed that Sunday with a fourth-place finish at the same distance.

No U.S. woman had finished higher than fifth in any race last season.

Rodriguez, 32, winner of two Olympic medals in 2002, had hung up her skates after disappointing results at the 2006 Olympics.

"I was totally burned out and overtrained and the thought of skating made me sick to my stomach," she said after qualifying for the 2008-09 World Cup team in September. "It took me about a year-and-a-half to get over it."

Meanwhile, there was more of the same for Olympic champion Shani Davis of Chicago.

Davis won both 1,000-meter races in Nagano, giving him medals in all six 1,000s (three wins) as the World Cup circuit breaks for Christmas.

-- Philip Hersh

Photo: U.S. speedskater Jennifer Rodriguez smiles after winning the women's 1,000-meter race at the Speed Skating World Cup in Nagano, Japan, on Saturday. Credit: Koji Sasahara / Associated Press

Crashed Ice is calling all (Canadian) hockey players

This post is for Fabulous Forum fans who live in Canada.

Pamplona has its running of the bulls.

Filene's Basement has its running of the brides.

And, come Jan. 24, 2009, Quebec again will have what we'll call the skating of the hockey players.

If you're the kind of guy or gal who gets a kick out of using your body to deflect pucks traveling at more than 100 miles per hours, chances are good that Red Bull's Crashed Ice is right up your alley. Or, more accurately, right down the 1,500-foot course that resembles a toboggan chute that zigs and zags through the heart of historic Quebec, dropping nearly 200 vertical feet in the process.

Red Bull, which created the contest a decade ago, limits entry to Canadian citizens. The company will hold qualifying rounds in various Canadian cities to cull the top 100 men. The lucky ones will head to Quebec.

Midnight (EST) on Monday is the entry deadline for the lottery that will determine which lucky Canadians will get the chance to speedskate their way down the course that has hairpin turns, moguls, jumps and ledges built into the chute's ice-covered floor. While the four skaters in each heat try to knock each other down. And a boisterous crowd cheers the action.

Here's how Red Bull describes the planned run:

We've sent the country's top scientists and Zamboni revolutionists to the toughest region of Siberia, where they are currently training on a remote compound. As a result they will return tougher, wiser and with a master blueprint on what is sure to be the most entertaining stretch of ice ever touched by a hockey blade.

Sounds not bad, eh? Well stay tuned ... this is a course with a beginning, middle and end you don't want to miss.

If you haven't seen Crashed Ice, here's a link to some Red Bull video. (Click on 'video' and then take your pick.) YouTube and Yahoo also have plenty of footage from past Crashed Ice contests.

-- Greg Johnson

Photo: Skaters approach the finish line during the 2008 Red Bull Crashed Ice contest. Credit: Didier Debusschere/Red Bull Photofiles

When it's good to have Channel 805

Since we've chosen to stick with our local cable outfit (Cox) for our digital television, there's no picking and choosing our NFL TV games at this house. I would have liked to have seen how it was remotely possible for the Chicago Bears (my lifetime team, Monsters of the Midway always) to score 48 points. In a single game. Watching the Bears struggle for the last few years while not really having a quarterback has led to a fantasy hope that the Cincinnati Bengals would give the Bears Carson Palmer. You know, because Palmer is a really good guy who deserves more than the losing, always-give-up culture that is Bengals ownership.

But otherwise I wasn't much interested in watching the NFL today when it occurred to me to check out the Universal Sports channel (805 in our area). And there it was -- live short-track speedskating from the former Olympic venue outside of Salt Lake City. It was a World Cup event.

The sport fascinates me. It is a contact sport but there is grace and rhythm to the laps, danger with the sharp blades and lots of strategy. Plus, there is Apolo Anton Ohno, who is beginning his serious training for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.

Ohno had crashed out of his Saturday race. I tuned in Sunday in time to see him win his 1500-meter heat, which he won with a neat passing move with about four laps to go. But in the finals Ohno ended up third. He was blocked out of taking the lead from the outside, then from the inside by some well-conceived and purposeful defense by Lee Jung-su and Lee Ho-suk, a pair of Koreans who finished first and second in the finals.

Ohno had earned significant enmity from Korean skaters and fans at the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics. Korea's Kim Dong-Sung crossed the finish line first but was disqualified for making an illegal blocking move on Ohno. The disqualification put Ohno into the gold-medal spot. The United States Olympic Committee received more than 16,000 angry emails (even some death threats) over a decision it had no say about.

It's still a long time until Vancouver and Ohno is just starting to put aside his outside life where he is something of a cult hero and even a Dancing With the Stars winner (the main picture on Ohno's website is of him and partner Julianne Hough holding the disco ball that goes to the winning team).

Anyway, after Ohno's second move was cut off in the final two laps of the 1,500-meter final Sunday, the 26-year-old Ohno pulled back and accepted the bronze. Ohno was smiling at the end. The Korean winners didn't see that, though. They were in front of Ohno congratulating themselves.

-- Diane Pucin

Photo: American Apolo Anton Ohno trails Koreans Lee Jung-su, left, and Lee Ho-suk during the finals of the men's 1,500 meters at the short-track speedskating championships in Salt Lake City on Sunday. Credit: Douglas C. Pizac / Associated Press

Terry Bowden: Brother Tommy got what he deserved at Clemson

Tommy Bowden had it coming when he was forced out on Monday as Clemson's coach.

He didn't meet expectations.

More succinctly, he didn't cut it at Clemson.

This would have been just another blunt assessment by a media type if the media type making the case against Tommy Bowden wasn't his brother, Terry.

You have to give Terry Bowden credit. He's a college football analyst for Yahoo! and Rivals.com and he faced a very tough situation this week after Tommy resigned under heavy pressure after a team that started the season No. 9 fell to 3-3 with a loss to Wake Forest.

Here's some of what Terry wrote:

It is at times like this when people wonder if you can be objective as an analyst. We are a close family, and Tommy and I are less than two years apart. We have shared bedrooms and little-league teams. We have fought with each other a little, and laughed together a lot...

...So, did Tommy Bowden deserve what happened to him Monday? Unfortunately, yes. He deserved it because he, of all people, knew what to expect when he got into this business. We grew up in it. He knew what to expect when he went to Clemson. He knew that no matter where you go, there is an expectation of success that must be met. After nine years at Clemson, he knew exactly what those expectations were and he knew they had not been met.

Wow. Imagine writing something like that about a brother or a sister.

Tommy might not have lived up to expectations in nine-plus years as Clemson's coach, but Terry lived up to his role as an analyst. It was a tough week for the Bowdens, although it would have been worse had father Bobby's Florida State team not rallied Thursday night to beat North Carolina State.

-- Chris Dufresne

Photo: Tommy Bowden announces his resignation as head football coach at Clemson University. Credit: Brian Schneider / US Presswire

Success in the long run -- or skate -- for Shani

Olympic champion Shani Davis (above) has more reason than ever to concentrate all his energy on long-track speedskating, in which he almost certainly will be a medal favorite in two events at the 2010 Olympics.

Davis, who likes to break up his season by skating short track for part of it, failed to make the fall U.S. World Cup team in short track when he finished seventh in American Cup I over the weekend in Plymouth, Minn.

He already is a World Cup team member in long track.

Davis, 26, was 2006 Olympic champion at 1,000 meters and silver medalist at 1,500. He utterly dominated the 1,000 on the World Cup circuit last year, winning nine of 10 races, then capped the 2007-08 season with the world single-distance title.  He also was World Cup leader and single-distance bronze medalist at 1,500.

Other speedskating news: Three-time Olympian Jennifer Rodriguez, who retired after the 2006 Olympics, is back in training and concentrating on the sprints.  Rodriguez, 32, was 2002 Olympic bronze medalist at 1,000 and 1,500 meters.

The U.S. women's speedskating team needs all the help it can get, given the abysmal results since the Turin Winter Games.  No U.S. skater made the top 10 in any event at the 2008 single-distance worlds, and none has won a medal in any World Cup event the past two seasons.

-- Philip Hersh

Photo: Shani Davis competes in the 1,000 meters at the speedskating World Cup at Kearns, Utah, last year. Credit: Douglas C. Pizac / Associated Press