Winter Games

PHOENIX — As hockey fever grips Los Angeles, Dodgers President Stan Kasten said he plans to explore whether the Kings could play in an NHL Winter Classic game at Dodger Stadium. "Facility-wise, we could certainly handle it," Kasten said. The NHL has yet to award its New Year's Day showcase to a warm-weather city. The Dodgers could offer baseball's largest stadium and the iconic backdrop of the San Gabriel Mountains. Kasten, former president of the NHL Atlanta Thrashers, said technology would allow ice to remain playable for an outdoor hockey game at Dodger Stadium but said he was unsure if the league would be interested.

PHOENIX — As hockey fever grips Los Angeles, Dodgers President Stan Kasten said he plans to explore whether the Kings could play in an NHL Winter Classic game at Dodger Stadium. "Facility-wise, we could certainly handle it," Kasten said. The NHL has yet to award its New Year's Day showcase to a warm-weather city. The Dodgers could offer baseball's largest stadium and the iconic backdrop of the San Gabriel Mountains. Kasten, former president of the NHL Atlanta Thrashers, said technology would allow ice to remain playable for an outdoor hockey game at Dodger Stadium but said he was unsure if the league would be interested.

It was after midnight, a week ago, the U.S. had earlier defeated Canada in a preliminary-round Olympic hockey game, the emptying streets wet, the mood soggy. I was returning from our nightly visit to the giant four-pronged Olympic flame with my 15-year-old daughter, Mary Clare, who was wearing an American flag like a cape, and a smile like a necklace. It was one of the first times she wore something that didn't represent her high school or favorite sports team. It was one of the first moments she may have realized the pride in being an American.

LeRoy Walker, the first African American to lead the U.S. Olympic Committee and the first black man to coach an American Olympic team, died Monday in Durham, N.C. He was 93. Walker's death was confirmed by Scarborough & Hargett Funeral home, but no cause was given. The grandson of slaves, Walker led the U.S. Olympic Committee from 1992 to 1996, shepherding the Summer Games staged in his native Atlanta and leading the group when the 2002 Winter Olympics were awarded to Salt Lake City.

The charm and challenge of the Winter Olympics could be found Thursday in the bewildered face of the man who had just been chosen to carry the U.S. flag in Friday night's opening ceremony. A 39-year-old dude who rides a sled. "I was just floored," said Mark Grimmette, a balding, soft-spoken fellow who is vastly different from the average American in more than just his two medals in four previous Olympics. He's vastly different because he lives on a luge. Americans don't luge.

Because speedskater Eric Heiden shaved maybe once a month, by his own count, the endorsement deal with Gillette didn't make sense. So he passed. And he passed on countless other offers too, more intent on camping and returning to school, riding his bike instead of riding five gold medals to his own personal mint. Even in 1980, before celebrity was as ephemeral as an eye blink, Heiden went from Lake Placid to the raging waters of notoriety thanks to the hardware around his neck. "Back then, you had really no chance of being a professional athlete and a very small chance of using your Olympic career to gain financial success, so it was never really something that was part of the equation when I was competing," said Heiden, who is now team doctor for U.S. Speedskating.

U.S. Olympic officials have one thing they would like to say to our neighbors from the Great White North. Whoa, Canada. The pace at which Canada's "Own the Podium" program has improved the country's winter sports results in anticipation of the Vancouver Olympics will almost certainly halt Team USA's recent rise toward the top of the Winter Games medal count. But, almost paradoxically, the United States can count on medal possibilities in more sports than ever before.

The Olympic Winter Games will remain spread over 16 days, partly as a safeguard against unpredictable weather, International Olympic Committee President Juan Antonio Samaranch indicated on Monday. Speaking 12 hours after the close of the Calgary Olympics, which had numerous last-minute schedule changes because of weather problems, Samaranch said more detailed weather reports would be needed in the future in selecting Olympic sites.

Ten years to the week after the Olympic flame was ignited over Sarajevo, and seven days after an attack on a central market there killed 68 people, the opening ceremony of the XVII Olympic Winter Games here Saturday was dedicated to the citizens of that war-ravaged Bosnian city.

One bid offers a traditional Alpine setting in the heart of Europe. Another promises a unique coastal and mountain layout on the Black Sea. A third trumpets the opening of a winter sports frontier in Asia. The International Olympic Committee is faced with three very different proposals for the 2014 Winter Games, and there is no telling which will prevail as the bid campaign enters its final days.

Makes sense since the region straddles the two states, but California and Nevada officials announced Thursday that they are joining forces to lure the Winter Games back to Lake Tahoe in 2022. The return of the games to Lake Tahoe would mark the first time the games have been in the U.S. since Salt Lake City in 2002. Squaw Valley, a resort on the California side of Lake Tahoe, hosted the Winter games in 1960. The pristine mountain lake is surrounded by ski resorts on the California and Nevada sides.

Canadian skier Sarah Burke, a leading pioneer of the freestyle halfpipe and the best-known athlete in her sport, died Thursday, nine days after crashing at the bottom of the superpipe during a training run in Utah. She was 29. Burke, who was a driving force behind the inclusion of the halfpipe in the 2014 Winter Olympics, was injured Jan. 10 while training at Park City Mountain resort. Tests revealed that she sustained "irreversible damage to her brain due to lack of oxygen and blood after cardiac arrest," according to a statement released on behalf of her family.

While the NHL and NHL Players Assn. squabble over last season's hockey-related revenue and future realignment, Rene Fasel watches from afar and hopes their disagreements won't spill over to include NHL players' participation in the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, Russia. Fasel, president of the Switzerland-based International Ice Hockey Federation and a member of the International Olympic Committee's executive board, avidly supports NHL players' competing in the Winter Games. He helped negotiate the deal that allowed NHL stars to represent their homelands for the first time at Nagano, Japan, in 1998, making it a marquee event there and in Salt Lake City; Turin, Italy; and Vancouver, Canada.

The ultimate Olympic gold medalist has left the podium. Dick Ebersol resigned as head of NBC Sports on Thursday. The whys and wherefores of whatever corporate politics at NBC/Comcast led to this will be discussed and dissected until the cows come home. If you are part of the Olympic movement, anywhere in the world, you don't care as much about why as you do about what. It is simple. Your sugar daddy is gone. Over the last two decades, Ebersol was to the Olympics what butter is to bread.

Attention Olympic hopefuls: If you want to minimize your risk of injury, you’re better off competing in a Summer Games sport than a Winter Games event. That’s the conclusion of a new study that analyzed 287 injury reports from the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver, Canada . Altogether, 11.2% of the athletes experienced at least one injury during the 17-day event. That compares with 9.6% during the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing . In Vancouver, 23% of injuries were severe enough that athletes had to skip training sessions or pull out of competition.

Michelle Kwan was a 13-year-old whose parents were trying to scrape up money for her skating when Yankees owner George Steinbrenner stepped up to the plate. Kwan, who became the most decorated figure skater in U.S. history, never would meet Steinbrenner, who died Tuesday at age 80. But she still has the "wicked cool" Yankees jacket Steinbrenner sent in response to her thank-you letter for his $10,000 contribution to her funding in the fall of 1993. "He was like an angel to come and help us," Kwan said Tuesday.

The International Olympic Committee's executive board will recommend changing the timing of the Olympics so that the Summer Games will be held in alternating even-numbered years with the Winter Games. Under the proposal, the Summer Games and the Winter Games would be held two years apart. Officials said the change would ease the financial burden for national Olympic committees, which now must fund both events in the same year.

Hosting the Olympics was not a big money-maker for Utah, tax reports show. Tax revenue increased 0.07% from February 2001 to February 2002, a difference of $200,000. People were drinking and smoking more. Wine and liquor sales were up 16.5% in February. Cigarette tax collections were up 50%. The figures were reported by the Deseret News. Still, organizers said they consider the Winter Games a success.

This is the story that won't go away a week after the Winter Games ended. It is horrific. It is inspiring. It involves the anguished wails of children and one of the most drastic U-turns a life ever saw. If you think Joannie Rochette's heart broke in Vancouver, wait till you hear the tale of Karla Green, 34, who in an instant lost a sister but gained five grieving kids. Here's the hellish part, the part that makes you shake your head over a needlessly awful event. Days before the Olympics began, Green's sister and brother-in-law were killed by an alleged drunk driver 10 blocks from their Alberta home, leaving behind four daughters and a son, ages 4 to 14. It was 5 a.m. when Aunt Karla got the news.

O Canada, did it ever fill the arena, everyone singing, players with their thick arms draped around one another, fans weeping into their giant red jerseys, surely one of the loudest anthems ever. You know what? Let Canada sing. It earned it. It needed it. The joy, the relief, the redemption, and, of course, the farewell. On the final day of Canada's official duties as Olympic hosts, its national sport survived America's national grit Sunday, winning the gold-medal hockey game over the United States in overtime, 3-2, in front of a bouncing sea of braying red. The winners celebrated with the game's best ice dancing, nearly two dozen men locked in a jumping, board-rattling embrace.