Blair Was One Of A Kind From Out Of America’s Heartland Bonnie Dominated Her Sport And Captured The Hearts Of A Worldwide Legion Of Fans

From Calgary to Albertville to Lillehammer, my fondest Winter Olympic memories are of Dutch fans singing “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean” in tribute to an American speedskater they admired as much as their own.

“Bring back, bring back, bring back my Bonnie to me, to me.”

Bonnie Blair never let them down, never let anyone down.

Winning was as routine for her as eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich before every race. She won five gold medals, more than any other U.S. woman in Olympic history, and a legion of fans.

Most were from Northern Europe, where speedskating dents the consciousness more than once every four years. Even after she moved to Milwaukee, they would knock on the door of her mother’s house in Champaign, Ill., and politely ask to see the bedroom where their Bonnie slept as a child.

They couldn’t understand how a young woman from America’s heartland, who grew up jostling in short-track packs, could dominate the best the Germans, the Russians and the Dutch had to offer.

It is a puzzle, enough of one that it’s safe to assume the United States won’t produce another like her for some time.

At the same time, the fact that young men and women in the United States have more opportunities than ever before to excel in Olympic sports is largely because of her.

No matter how you might feel about George Steinbrenner as a baseball owner, he was one of the most positive forces on the U.S. Olympic movement in the last half century.

One reason he said he became so involved is because he heard Blair’s story - of how she had to sneak into a dark skating rink at 6 o’clock each morning to practice because it was too crowded later in the day, of how she would have been hard pressed to compete internationally if she hadn’t been funded by her hometown police department.

During the 1988 Winter Games in Calgary, Alberta, where Blair won one-third of the United States’ six medals, Steinbrenner, upon his appointment as chairman of a U.S. Olympic Committee overview commission, vowed a day would come when American athletes no longer had to beg for money, facilities or practice time.

That day is close.

No American athlete who competed in Calgary had ever received more than $2,500 from the USOC. Ten years later, some American athletes here have received as much as $65,000.

The United States has only one world-class indoor speedskating oval, in West Allis, Wis., but it soon will have another in the host city for the 2002 Winter Olympics, Salt Lake City.

That will serve as the USOC’s training center for speedskating. Mike Moran, USOC spokesman, said he would like to see Blair in charge of the programs.

“She’d draw kids like a Pied Piper,” Moran said.

But Blair isn’t looking past July.

That’s when she and her husband, David Cruikshank, are expecting their first child.

Blair, 33, retired from the sport three years ago because she said she wanted to start a family. Cruikshank, a 29-year-old speedskater, said Monday he’s retiring after this season because he wants to stay home with them.

They have traveled the world several times over but have managed to remain as unpretentious and wide-eyed as ever, sending out postcards from their 1996 honeymoon that pronounced them “Just Mauied.”

Although his wife is the famous one, other speedskaters are not among those tempted to call him Mr. Bonnie Blair.

They say he has earned his own identity within the sport and might have more victories to show for it if he hadn’t been so attentive to Blair during the years they dated.

If she is “America’s little sister,” as a Midwestern columnist once called her, he is the U.S. speedskating team’s big brother.

Blair’s extended family of 55 persons who followed her to Canada, France and Norway for the previous three Olympics are missing, assuring all of us here will have more sleep but less fun.

Sitting with Cruikshank’s parents Monday, she tried to muster up enough enthusiasm for all Da Blairs.

“This is an e-mail Olympics for us,” she said. “Now I’m the family, some of David’s family and me. My mom is bummed because she can’t be here, but she’s 78 now and it’s such a long trip.”

She can’t help but reflect.

“Do I miss it?” she said. “Yes, I miss it. I miss everything about it. The travel, my teammates.

“But it’s the youngsters’ turn now. With my husband still competing, it’s easier. Plus, I’m on the skating federation’s board of directors and I skate with my husband. I feel comfortable with the whole thing, although it’s difficult being in the stands here.

“It just seemed everything about my career went like clockwork. No major injuries, the right people in my career at the right time. I was really lucky.”

No, we were.