One has mastered the Cyrillic alphabet and has the dress sense of Liberace; another was abandoned as a baby on the doorstep of a hut in Pusan, South Korea, and was brought up by two ski instructors in Colorado; a third is a kid from Chicago’s south side who is the first African-American to represent the US at a Winter Olympics and the first to do so in a permanent state of war with the sporting establishment; a fourth is a 5ft 4in orange-haired 19-year-old known as the “Flying Tomato” who turned professional at 13 and already owns three houses. And none of them is Bode Miller.
Welcome to the weird and wonderful world of the US team for the Winter Olympics, which open in Turin on Friday. Then there are the snow- boarders, a maverick breed who have formed a marketing cooperative known as the Collection outside the control of the US Ski and Snowboard Association (USSA) and, very probably, the US Olympic Committee too. Their leader is Gretchen Bleiler, favourite for the half-pipe event in Turin, who once posed for the cover of FHM magazine clad in nothing but a painted-on bikini and is perfecting a trick called the Michalchuk, a backflip never landed before by a woman in a major competition. “We’re going to have to bushwhack our way through this whole thing,” she says. Even the language of the slopes is changing.
Rarely has so much oddball talent been corralled beneath the star-spangled banner. Rarely too has there been a stronger or more unlikely set of Olympic dreamers. Bill Marolt, the president of USSA, must feel like a headmaster in charge of a troublesome set of students. Miller, the outspoken downhiller from New Hampshire, has already been summoned to the study to explain comments made to the CBS news programme 60 Minutes that he once skied “wasted” — in other words drunk, according to the show’s presenters. Miller is merely the first in a long queue.
Shani Davis, who has overcome every possible racial and cultural barrier to become a world record-holder in speed skating, could be next. Davis had his funding cut because he wears the logo of a Dutch bank — and non-official sponsor — on his competition suit. Davis responded by missing the Olympic trials and the dispute still simmers.
Yet, if the US team maintains the remarkable improvement they showed in Salt Lake City — where they doubled their previous best tally by winning 34 medals, including 10 gold — the American flag could sit atop the medal table by the end of 17 days of competition. Whereas America has tended to rely on talented individuals such as Eric Heiden and Bill Johnson to keep the winter flame alive, the 21 1-strong squad for the 2006 Games brims with talent in almost every discipline. “Best in the world, that’s our target,” says Marolt.
No event will be watched with more curiosity or, doubtless, screened with more hype than the men’s figure skating, which features three-time US champion Johnny Weir. And not all of America will tune in for the triple axel or the toe loop. What Weir decides to wear and what he decides to say, win or lose, will be of paramount interest.
At the recent national championships, Weir took to the ice with one sleeve of his costume covered in feathers, the other in fishnet and with a red glove shaped like the head of a swan. But though his costume design and choice of music has caused its share of trouble with the authorities — and, incidentally, made him a superstar on the streets of Moscow — Weir’s colourful use of the metaphor has been the source of greater angst.
“An icicle on coke” and “a Care Bear on acid” were two of Weir’s more radical descriptions for his costumes. When he drew a comparison between his own slower programme at the recent national championships and one of his rivals in terms of drink and drugs, the authorities took exception. “Mine they kind of sat back and had their cognac and cigarettes and relaxed,” Weir said. “His was more like a vodka shot. Let’ s snort coke, kind of thing.” The remarks drew an immediate rebuke from Ron Hershberger, president of US Figure Skating.
“It is not an analogy I like to hear,” he said. “But Johnny is outspoken and he’s free to state his mind.” He is also the best thing to happen to American figure skating in two decades.
Weir’s background, like that of Davis, is not conventional, not for a skater anyway. He was brought up in Quarryville, Pennsylvania, in a residential road backing onto a cornfield. When he was 12, the snow melted and froze on the cornfield and, encouraged by his mother and inspired by watching Oksana Baiul win gold in Lillehammer in 1994, he began to skate. He inherited much of his rebellious nature from his mother Patti, who, Weir has often reminisced at his press conferences, would smoke in the girls’ bathrooms and ride round town on the back of motorbikes. Weir calls her “the perfect role model for a middle child”. But, like Patti, he is not in the habit of apologising. “I love having bad things said about myself and people reprimanding me,” says the 21-year-old. “No one is Jesus. If I appeal to myself and my mother, I’m happy.”
Davis had a flair for standing out from the crowd, too. In his black neighbourhood of Chicago he wore a Bonnie Blair sweatshirt in honour of the five-time gold medallist speed skater. Bonnie Blair in the land of Michael Jordan? After that, breaking down barriers was easy. Davis was attracted to rollerblading first, then when his mother Cherie started working for a Chicago lawyer who was also a member of the US Speed Skating board of directors, his sporting career took a decisive turn. Cherie typed up the minutes of Illinois Speed Skating Association and wondered if her son could get involved. He did and, at the age of 23, became a world champion at long track and qualified for his second Olympics. Like Shaun White, the big-haired Californian who turned professional at 13 and is a double world champion at skateboarding and snowboarding, Davis is among the favourites to win gold.
No wonder, too, that Davis’s closest friend is Apolo Ohno, the 2002 Olympic champion in the 1500m short track, the wayward son of a Japanese hairdresser, who once owned a hairstylist’s shop in Seattle called Yuki’s Diffusions. Yuki, a single father, threatened to send his son to military school; Apolo preferred life on the streets or at the rink. In 1997, at the age of 14, he became US champion. A year later, he finished 16th out of 16 and failed to qualify for the Nagano games. But he returned in triumph at Salt Lake City.
At least Ohno knew his father. Toby Dawson, who will compete in the moguls, has never known his real name or his parents. He was adopted at the age of three and grew up on a snowboard in Vail, Colorado. Now he is becoming an Olympian in the event once dominated by Eric Bergoust, competing in his last Olympics at the age of 36.
Bergoust used to train with his brothers by jumping off the roof of his parents’ farmhouse in Montana. Juggling fire was his idea of a quiet pastime. “I was a highly trained, crazy little kid,” he says. In 1998 he won gold in the freestyle aerials, in 2002 he fell and came last of 12 when favourite to defend his title. Four years ago, “Weird Eric”, as he was known, was cool. Now, he’s just normal.
