Finally, attention on Turin

TURIN, Italy – The Super Bowl is five days behind us. Spring training doesn’t start until next week. The basketball and hockey playoffs don’t begin for months.

Tonight, it’s all about the flame.

The Italians are promising a spectacular (and fashionable) Opening Ceremony to kick off the XX Olympic Winter Games – an eclectic and energetic show featuring everything from a mosh pit and dancing trees to orange-clad in-liners with flames shooting out of their helmets.

With an estimated 2 billion viewers watching worldwide on television, the production will undoubtedly be far different than the 1956 Opening Ceremonies of the Cortina d’Ampezzo Olympics – the last time the Winter Games were held in Italy.

Broadcast in black and white, they were the first Olympics to be televised. Just more than 800 athletes from 32 nations competed, compared to the 2,000-plus competitors from 82 countries that had checked into Turin as of Thursday.

Another historical note: The 1956 Olympics were also the last in which the figure skating competition was held outdoors.

Then as now, the focus of the Olympics is winning medals. But unlike past Games, the U.S. Olympic Committee won’t predict how many medals it thinks the Americans should win in Turin.

“We don’t want to say the number of medals,” Jim Scherr, USOC chief, said Thursday. “We will be pleased and proud of their performance whether they win or lose.”

Scherr’s reluctance to set a mark is probably wise. It will be difficult for the Americans to match their medal total of the 2002 Salt Lake Games, where their goal was 20 and they won 34.

The big winners of those Games: the men’s snowboarding sweep in halfpipe, three medals total in men’s and women’s bobsled, two medals in doubles luge, and 11 total medals in speedskating (eight in long track, three in short track).

Scherr said Thursday that nations usually experience a drop-off in medals – as much as 41 percent – four years after hosting the Games. That would mean more than a dozen fewer medals for the U.S. team in Turin.

“In Salt Lake City, we had a breakthrough performance for the U.S. team with 34 medals and 75 top-eight finishes,” Scherr said. “In Salt Lake, we were on home soil with a friendly crowd. You’re eating home-cooked meals in front of friends and family. This is a significantly different environment in terms of time zones and approach, but we have great athletes to address these challenges.”

Notes

The European-dominated International Olympic Committee rejected pleas from two traditional American sports, softball and baseball, to be reinstated for the London Games. … Eight Olympic cross-country skiers, including two Americanswere suspended for five days after they were found to have excessive hemoglobin levels. The U.S. Ski Association said the tests were taken Wednesday, meaning athletes Kikkan Randall and Leif Zimmerman will be barred from competition until at least Monday. That would keep the skiers out of the first cross-country events of the Olympics – the men’s and women’s pursuit.