Winter Olympic Games 1998

Most skaters wobble across the ice at local skating rinks like toddlers teetering through their first steps. This is sunny Southern California, after all, where skates are supposed to have wheels, not blades. But for three Manhattan Beach siblings, geography is not destiny. Stephanie, Tiffany and Johnnie Stiegler have grown up frolicking along the shores of South Bay beaches, but they've still managed to become first-rate figure skaters on ice.

Adversaries a year ago at the start of the lockout that cut the NHL season almost in half, Gary Bettman, NHL commissioner, and Bob Goodenow, head of the NHL Players Assn., were allies Monday as they formally announced that the league, the union and the International Ice Hockey Federation had agreed to allow NHL players to represent their countries in the 1998 Olympics at Nagano, Japan. The NHL will halt play on Feb. 8, 1998, and resume on Feb.

News item: Terje Haakonsen will not be present during the Winter Olympics at Turin, Italy. Reaction: Terje who? To some it seems like ages ago when the world's greatest snowboarder said those nasty things about those who run the world's greatest sports festival. Specifically, he compared then-International Olympic Committee President Juan Antonio Samaranch to mobster Al Capone and referred to IOC members as "ski-Nazis."

\o7 \f7 Watching the Winter Olympics on TV, I am struck anew with how we in this country prize the second-rate in our athletics. I mean, I can do without the luge or the two-man bobsled, and I don't have to go to Nagano to see the New York Rangers play hockey, but I marvel at the pressure-packed implacability of the events for athletes on snow skis or figure skates. Look! You think a World Series is throat-choking pressure? A Super Bowl? Even a golf Open? Wimbledon? Forget it.

Tonya Harding might try an Olympic comeback to the strains of some other country's national anthem, and the question is: Where can she get those golden skates sharpened in Bolivia? Harding's agent said Friday he was near a decision on asking the U.S. Figure Skating Assn. to rescind the lifetime ban imposed for the two-time Olympian's part in covering up the attack on rival Nancy Kerrigan three years ago.

Casting a wary eye at the Nagano Winter Olympics, which will end one year from today, the speaker somberly assessed: "If it continues like this, I think the Nagano Games will not be successful." And the speaker was? (a) The president of the Japanese Olympic Committee, inspecting the preparations firsthand. (b) Billy Payne, thinking wishfully.

As the U.S. women's national hockey team prepares for the World Championships next week and its Olympic debut next year in Nagano, two Californians are poised to make an impact on a game that has been dominated by Easterners.

Erin Whitten is accustomed to seeing double takes when she tells people her vocation. "I'm 5-5 and I don't look like a hockey player, I'm told. I don't have any stitches and I have all my own teeth," she said. "For the most part, when people find out, they just say, 'Oh, we have a national team?' " Not only does the U.S. have a national team, Whitten is its top goaltender. And because of her talent, she might win an Olympic medal next year at Nagano, Japan.

A tiny, inconspicuous store selling licensed Olympic goods is about the only clue in bustling downtown Nagano that the Winter Games are coming. Outside Nagano, the marketing has been almost non-existant. Sports fans who lamented the over-commercialization of the Atlanta Olympics last year can relax this time. In Nagano, the problem is just the opposite--the games aren't getting hyped enough. "There is a lot that needs to be done here," IOC marketing director Michael Payne said.

The upcoming Winter Olympics in Japan--and the inclusion of the NHL's top players--means the league will take a break during the regular season, from Feb. 8-24. For the first time, regular-season games will be played outside of North America when the Mighty Ducks open against Vancouver in Tokyo, Oct. 3 and Oct. 4. The Kings start with a five-game trip, opening on Oct. 1 at Pittsburgh. They play their home opener on Oct. 12 against Ottawa.