He Turned Victory Lapse Into Art Form

SALT LAKE CITY — It’s fast. It’s freaky. It’s butts on the ice, heads on the boards, and they cheat more than figure skating judges on casino night.

Is short-track speedskating the perfect sport for these Winter Olympics or what?

Which pretty much makes Apolo Anton Ohno the perfect Winter Olympian.

You’ve seen him. You can’t take your eyes off him. Like 15,600 fans at the Salt Lake Ice Center on Saturday, you wanted to tape a tiny cardboard soul patch to your chin and look like him.

Ohno is everything that television, for the last two weeks, has wanted us to embrace in an Olympic athlete.

Yet he is everything that made these two weeks so unsettling.

Have we cheered him for his skill and athleticism?

Or for his regal name and a snowboarder’s haircut?

Have we been so charmed by his skeleton recklessness that we have ignored his bobsledder’s ruthlessness?

And hasn’t anybody noticed that he pulls it all together with the feigned naivete of a Canadian pairs skater?

Cover boy or not, Ohno has a checkered past, a controversial present, and a future with the Bay City Bombers.

It was thus only fitting that, on Saturday night, this made-for-Salt-Lake Olympian had a B-movie finale.

He was disqualified in the 500-meter race for shoving a guy.

He was then overtaken by the Chinese team for third place in the 5,000 relay after teammate Rusty Smith had put them in that position by falling.

Ohno thus finishes not only with two medals, but also batting 1.000.

Four events, four strange endings.

One gold medal for a race in which he finished second.

One silver medal for a race that he finished on his rear end.

One disqualification.

One fourth-place after a teammate’s fall.

He now steps into the arms of a marketing machine that will ignore the two weeks of questionable crashes and South Korean appeals and churn the 19-year-old Seattle into some sort of hero.

“This puts it all to rest,” Ohno said afterward.

Hardly.

This, instead, resurrects an ancient Olympic question.

Given that most of these athletes come into our lives every four years as strangers, why do we applaud some louder than others?

Ohno was surrounded by dozens of reporters Saturday night despite winning nothing.

Smith, of Sunset Beach, who earned the bronze medal in the 500 before falling in the relay, was surrounded only by a handful.

Ohno answered a few questions, shrugged, and was rushed off.

Smith, despite coughing constantly because of a bad cold, answered until the questions ended.

Said Ohno: “Lots of crazy things happen in the Olympics. You ask any athlete, if something crazy is going to happen, it’s going to happen here.”

Said Smith: “I got what I’ve been searching for.... I’m so proud to be an American.”

Is that we like crazy, and have grown weary of patriotism?

Is this one reason we like Ohno?

Before the Games, Ohno and Smith were accused of being the masterminds behind a rigged pre-Olympics race that would help Ohno’s buddy Shani Davis make the team.

The allegations were judged to be without merit, and Davis made the team, and came to Salt Lake City.

But after a couple of days, officials decided Davis wasn’t needed, and sent him overseas.

For Ohno, it was the start of a week that was weird at best, and conspiratorial at worst.

In his first event, the 1,000 meters last weekend, he crashed with South Korean Ahn Hyun Soo and China’s Li Jiajun on the last lap, sending their spandex bodies into the boards like brightly colored bowling pins.

Ohno earned a silver medal simply by emerging from the mess and sliding across the finish line on his butt.

It was a pretty good insurance settlement for an accident that may have been at least partially caused by him.

“People can think what they want,” he said last week. “People who watch the sport, they understand.”

In his second event, Wednesday’s 1,500, Ohno finished second, but won a gold medal after Korean Kim Dong-Sung was disqualified for skating into Ohno’s lane.

Again, it was on the last lap. And, again, it was unclear who was at fault.

The alleged infraction wasn’t nearly as blatant as Ohno’s hands-thrown-into-the-air gesture that convinced the judges he was impeded.

The Koreans protested that Ohno had been faking.

Others in the race thought Ohno was faking.

But Ohno would never cop to anything, not even acknowledging whether he was actually touched.

“I’ll have to look at the tape,” he said.

Officials let him keep the medal, bringing this story to its final chapter Saturday night, Ohno’s chance to become the Americans’ only four-medal winner.

The first chance ended on the final lap of the 500 semifinals--yep, that final lap again--when Ohno pushed Japan’s Satoru Terao into the wall and was ejected.

The second chance ended in a relay in which, even after Smith fell, the Americans had a chance for a medal, but Ohno was clearly gassed.

“Oh, it wasn’t his fault, it was my fault, totally my fault,” Smith said. “After I fell, we were cooked.”

And so Apolo Anton Ohno leaves here with plenty of suspicion, but no fault, and a marketing future as bright--if not as awkward--as those canary helmets.

When he took the ice to huge cheers for one of the final times Saturday, a certain fan named Michelle Kwan held up a sign that read, “Oh yes, Ohno,” next to the drawing of a big pair of lips.

Oh yes, he has a great name. Oh no, we shouldn’t confuse it for greatness.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at [email protected]