2020 race takes shape

For two weeks in the summer of 2004, Olympic Park in Athens seemed like the center of the world. Now the park is mostly empty, the buildings and the flies together under the Greek sun.

Authorities in Italy built a new bobsled run for the 2006 Winter Games up in the mountains near Torino. Now that track, which cost $100 million to build, $2 million annually to operate, is due to be torn down.

In 2008, the Bird’s Nest in Beijing was where Usain Bolt burst to worldwide fame. Now the stadium draws the occasional tourist or two. It’s a long time until its next meaningful date, the 2015 world track and field world championships.

The International Olympic Committee likes to talk about legacy, the notion that venues built for a Games will have utility afterward. It costs tens of millions of dollars to bid, billions to then get ready. The race for the 2020 Summer Games, which formally hit the start line Tuesday, highlights that notion even as it underscores the dramatic choice facing the IOC.

Like perhaps never before.

The IOC will choose Sept. 7 at a meeting in Buenos Aires from among three cities: Madrid, Tokyo and Istanbul.

At this early stage, it is far too premature to declare any a favorite. All three cities have upsides. All three have flaws.

It’s laughable, even, to note the odds from the British bookmaker William Hill: Tokyo the 4-6 favorite, Istanbul at 5-2 and Madrid at 3-1. Based on — what?

Tokyo barely made it out of the first round in voting for 2016. Madrid, if anyone at William Hill wants to look it up, finished second to Rio de Janeiro; moreover, Madrid was essentially one vote shy of making it into the final round of voting for 2012.

Tokyo’s 2020 bid is likely to draw rave technical reviews from the IOC. It did in 2016.

This 2020 Tokyo bid was launched to remind the world, in the wake of the devastating 2011 earthquake and tsunami in northeastern Japan, that the country is not only safe and welcoming but open for business.

Istanbul is in many ways the most intriguing choice. It represents the IOC’s recent expansionist turn.

One must always, however, remember that the IOC is an institution historically dominated by European interests. The only traditionally European city in the race is — Madrid. The only major European capital never to have hosted the Games is — Madrid.

The IOC works on personalities and relationships. Last summer, Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr. — who will be playing a key role in Madrid’s campaign — stormed to a powerful win for an IOC executive board seat.

Just last month, the Olympic committee in Panama held successful elections, ending a nearly five-year power struggle. Who helped them get there? Alejandro Blanco, the president of the Spanish Olympic Committee and the Madrid 2020 bid.

In 2003, the IOC commissioned a report — led by Canadian member Dick Pound — that among other matters, urged caution and restraint in the building of Games venues.

Indeed, the report begins with a quote from the founder of the modern Games, Pierre de Coubertin, decrying the “often exaggerated expenses” incurred in readying for the Games, a “sizable part of which represented the construction of permanent buildings, which were moreover unnecessary.”

That was in 1911.

Since that 2003 report, which the full membership adopted, the IOC has nonetheless gone on to endorse mega-projects.

To be clear: The IOC avows one thing. And then it goes and does the other. The issue is when — if ever — the IOC is going to get serious about what it says it’s serious about.

Because the warning signs are there. Rome pulled out of this 2020 race last February, saying it was too expensive — in its case, $12.5 billion — to play.

London’s 2012 Games ran to more than $14 billion in public funding.

Sochi for 2014? The Russians started from scratch in transforming a Black Sea summer resort into a Winter Games destination. Who knows how much it will cost? Public accounting — in Russia? Really?

Rio de Janeiro for 2016? Billions. Stay tuned. Last month, the IOC cautioned that “time is ticking” and the Brazilians have to move “with all vigor.” Does anyone think that moving vigorously under deadline pressure is now going to cost less money than more?

Pyeongchang for 2018 represents the IOC’s latest move into “new horizons,” the Koreans’ brilliant tagline. The Koreans also budgeted — this was figured in 2010 dollars — $6.3 billion for capital improvements tied to the Olympics.

Now the 2020 numbers:

In 2012 dollars, Istanbul’s infrastructure and public services budget for 2020 totals $19.2 billion.

Tokyo’s capital improvements budget: $4.7 billion. Of that, $1.47 billion is marked for a wholesale renovation of  Olympic Stadium, which would also be ready for the 2019 rugby World Cup.

Madrid: a mere $1.9 billion. Most of its infrastructure is already in place. What a concept.

The Turkish strategy is transparently in line with what the IOC has been doing in recent elections. Simply put,  it’s go big or go home, and the Turkish economy, which has been booming, right now can absolutely can handle $19.2 billion. Or more.

With Istanbul, meanwhile, there’s not only a double but a triple play at work. The IOC could not only go to a Muslim county for the first time; by doing so, it would take Doha out of the bid game for probably 20 years. The IOC — looking at soccer’s World Cup there in 2022 — has been, shall we say, skeptical of the impact Qatari money might have if Doha were allowed as a full-on candidate, cutting it early from the 2016 and 2020 IOC races.

So is it a slam dunk for Istanbul?

Hardly.

The ongoing violence in Syria — which borders Turkey — remains a serious IOC concern. Moreover, already there’s noteworthy talk about Istanbul’s traffic and other “technical” problems. In that vein, there was this Twitter post last month at the short-course world championships from U.S. swimmer Jessica Hardy:  “Good job Turkey for hanging our flag backwards in every medal ceremony. And for filling the stands for 1 night of world champs!”

So it’s Tokyo, right?

Everyone who counts within the Olympic movement is clear that Tokyo and Japan would put on well-run Games. Not the issue. Tokyo is a cool city, too. So that’s not it.

And neither is the risk of an earthquake in Tokyo, despite questions from some Tuesday. That’s just silly.

The Games are going to be in Korea in 2018. China is suddenly making noise about the Winter Games in 2022. Does the IOC want to go back to that part of the world again in 2020?

Also, and of perhaps more significance: the IOC wants to feel welcomed. Like, really wanted. A recent poll by Tokyo organizers fixed public support at 67 percent. That was behind Madrid and Istanbul. An IOC poll last year put it at 47 percent — and 47 percent is not going to get it done. Neither, frankly, is 67 percent.

So — it has to be Madrid?

Who wouldn’t want to spend 17 days in Madrid? The food. The museums. The street life.

That, though, is actually one of the challenges: the IOC moves now increasingly — sometimes almost exclusively — in English, and the Madrid team’s strength is still mostly in Spanish.

And for a country beset by an unemployment rate of one in four, the natural play in handing over the bid book this week at IOC headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, would have been to have had on hand a charismatic player in finance, the same way Brazil’s central banker played an outsized role in Rio’s winning 2009 bid.

He or she could have pointed out, after all, that the Madrid campaign — with only $1.9 billion in capital costs — is precisely in line with the strategy the IOC has said since 2003 it wants to enforce. At least in theory.

Madrid sent a team of nine to Lausanne. But not one such individual.

It’s a long, long road from January until September in Buenos Aires. The IOC evaluation visits take place in March — Tokyo first, then Madrid, then Istanbul. In July, at a meeting in Lausanne, the IOC will hold an all-members briefing to review the three files.

By then, perhaps, someone else will have noted that $19.2 billion is slightly more than 10 times $1.9 billion. The question is not whether it matters. It does. It’s whether that’s a good thing, or not.

Musing on IOC membership: next, please?

The U.S. Olympic Committee’s press release Thursday out of Redwood City, Calif., and the board of directors meeting there, started out with the news that Larry Probst had been confirmed for a second four-year term as board chairman.

It immediately switched — same paragraph — to note that Bill Marolt, president and chief executive since 1996 of the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Assn., and Whitney Ping, a 2004 Athens Games table tennis athlete, had been added as new directors. The entirety of that same first paragraph was devoted not to Probst but to Marolt and Ping and who they were replacing on the board.

So typically understated.

To be clear, there is nothing — nothing at all — wrong with being so low-key. Indeed, there is a lot right, and it explains a lot of the USOC’s success under Probst’s direction. He gets things done. People in the Olympic movement have come to trust him. The USOC is taken seriously. And he isn’t the sort of person who needs a lot of attention, or public validation, for any or all of it.

The issue now: when does Probst become a member of the International Olympic Committee?

Mind you, Probst is not — repeat, not — lobbying for IOC membership. But it only makes sense, and not only for the USOC. It makes sense for the IOC, and for the Olympic movement worldwide.

To be clear once more, there are always any number of candidates for IOC membership. But, as things stand now, two are not only incredibly obvious and deserving but would actually bring a demonstrated business and political track record as well as proven leadership skills — Probst and South Korea’s Yang Ho Cho, who directed the winning Pyeongchang 2018 bid.

The tricky part would seem to be how to get this done.

And when.

The way the system is now set up, both would seem to be eligible to come in through the national Olympic committee door — Probst as the chairman of the USOC, Cho as a vice-president of the Korean Olympic Committee.

There are, of course, two IOC sessions — as the IOC conventions are called — within the next 14 months, the first in Buenos Aires in September, 2013, the next in Sochi, in connection with the Winter Games, in February, 2014.

It’s not entirely clear, given the way these things shift, how many NOC openings there might be. But the thinking in some circles is that initially there might only be one.

If that’s the case, who is more deserving? The chairman and chief executive of Korean Air? Or the chairman of Electronic Arts?

Or is that in any way a fair way to frame the issue?

Can the IOC finesse the matter to make one or the other a member in his individual right? Or somehow?

In Cho’s case, Pyeongchang ran away with perhaps the most impressive bid victory ever — winning in the first round in July, 2011, with 63 votes over Munich, with 25, and Annecy, France, with seven. Those 63 votes were the most-ever in an IOC first-round ballot; Salt Lake City took 54 in winning for 2002.

Cho came to the 2018 campaign — the third in a row for Pyeongchang — after others, led by formidable personalities such as Jin Sun Kim, governor of the province in which Pyeongchang is located, had not quite pushed the bid past the finish line. Pyeongchang lost for 2014 by four votes, for 2010 by three.

The 2018 campaign proved a high-wire balancing act. Out front, all seemed seamless. Behind the scenes, Cho had to balance a multiplicity of interests: government (national, regional and local), business (Samsung and others), the KOC, all the while taking the dramatic step of moving the bid toward its “new horizons” theme in first-rate English, hardly the preferred language of many of those he was directing.

Kim is now the Pyeongchang 2018 organizing committee chairman. Cho is back at Korean Air.

Intriguingly, like Probst, Cho is not much of a publicity-seeker. He, too, just gets stuff done.

Probst, after a rocky start as USOC chairman that saw Chicago’s 2016 bid booted in first-round IOC voting in October, 2009, has since been nothing short of — at the risk of losing one’s journalistic skeptic card — sensational.

The way he has done it has been entirely, thoroughly appropriate but at the same time fascinating: he has ceded day-to-day control to the chief executive he hired, Scott Blackmun.

That has led, genuinely, to trust and teamwork.

The results:

On the field of play, the U.S. team won the medals count at both Vancouver 2010 and London 2012.

Behind the scenes, the USOC and NBC repaired a relationship that by the time of the Chicago vote in 2009 had shown some signs of fraying; in 2011, NBC agreed to pay $4.38 billion for the rights to the 2014, 2016, 2018 and 2020 Games.

Most important, perhaps, the USOC and IOC this year finalized a new revenue-sharing deal.

Blackmun and Probst have made international relationship-building a priority, perhaps with an eye toward a bid for the Games, probably in 2024 for the Summer Games; it was said Thursday that the call will go out in the first few weeks of 2013 to cities interested in bidding.

Under Probst and Blackmun, the USOC has genuinely put into practice the unique duality that is its reality.

Because of its resource, history and geography, it is at once a stand-out Olympic committee among the 204 on Planet Earth. At the same time, it is simply one among 204 — a humble member of the so-called “Olympic family,” a point Probst and Blackmun stress repeatedly, and in that spirit the USOC played host in 2012 to an IOC “women and sport” conference in Los Angeles, an IOC athlete jobs conference in Lake Placid, N.Y., and a Pan American sports meeting in Miami.

Big picture:

It might have been better for his own personal life if Probst had not gotten that second term. But, like Cho, Probst gets it. He understands the power of the Olympic movement to effect change in people’s lives, especially young people.

And the USOC rules are such now that, absent something dramatic or untoward, you’d expect a third. That kind of continuity would be a good thing, indeed.

Even better if he — and Cho — both — were IOC members.

Tim Burke back in the spotlight

Tim Burke finished third in a World Cup biathlon Sunday in Pokljuka, Slovenia, his first podium finish since the 2010 season, highlighting an extraordinary weekend for American athletes on skis.

Burke’s third-place in the 15-kilometer mass start marked his fourth career top-three finish.

“I feel like I’m back in the form I had before,” Burke said over the phone. “And I’m more confident now.”

Left to right: Jakov Fak of Slovenia, Andreas Birnbacher of Germany, Tim Burke of the United States on the podium // photo US Biathlon/Nordic Focus

Comparing Burke’s achievement to those of other Americans over the weekend is, of course, something of apples to oranges. After all:

In Alta Badia, Italy, on Sunday, alpine racer Ted Ligety dominated a giant slalom to win by 2.04 seconds over Austria’s Marcel Hirscher. It was Ligety’s 14th career giant-slalom victory, tying him for fourth on the all-time wins list.

On Saturday, in snowy, foggy Val Gardena, Italy, downhiller Steven Nyman, starting 39th — won. He missed all of last year with a torn left Achilles’ tendon. Nyman’s last top-three finish: 2007, at Beaver Creek, Colo.

Also in Val Gardena, Travis Ganong put down a career-best tenth.

In freestyle skiing on Saturday in Ruka, Finland, Heather McPhie — relying on her back-X and signature D-spin — notched her first World Cup victory in three seasons; on the men’s side, Jeremy Cota took third. Four U.S. women placed in the top 10 and three American men in the top six.

In World Cup snowboard-cross racing Friday at Telluride, Colo., two-time Olympic champion Seth Wescott — who was out much of last year with a shoulder injury — won a photo finish in a blizzard to prevail over Australia’s Alex Pullin, who had beaten him in the quarterfinals and semifinals.

Wescott and X Games champ Nate Holland won Saturday’s team event.

“It feels really good to be back,” Wescott said after winning Friday’s race, adding, “…When I hole-shotted that first one, I said, ‘Here we go, I love doing this.’ ”

In men’s halfpipe Saturday in Breckenridge, Colo., on the Dew Tour, Shaun White and Louie Vito went one-two, White throwing an enormous signature double McTwist 1200 in his first run to score 95.25; Kaitlyn Farrington — who debuted back-to-back 900s for the first time in her competition run — won the women’s event, Maddy Schaffrick taking third.

“I am excited! After coming off a knee injury this summer I am glad to be on top,” White said. “I feel great and am pumped for the season. This is the road to Sochi!”

Also in Breckenridge, in the women’s freeski superpipe, Brita Sigourney and Maddie Bowman went 1-2, Sigourney winning in her first competition after suffering a knee injury last February and training hard at the U.S. Ski Team’s Park City’s Center of Excellence workout facility all summer.

And Jamie Anderson won the slopestyle event, her run featuring spins in all four directions: a half cab 5-0, frontside 720, switch backside 540 and, finally, a huge 540 that she floated to the bottom.

In cross-country skiing, at the World Cup sprints Saturday in Canmore, Canada, Kikkan Randall took second, behind Norway’s Maiken Kaspersen Falla. Randall leads the World Cup sprint standings; she moved up to second in the overall standings. The top American man, Andy Newell, finished fifth.

With all that … Tim Burke? And third place?

Yes.

Tim Burke.

Because biathlon, and Burke, are all about context, promise and opportunity.

The U.S. biathlon team has never — again, never — won an Olympic medal and Burke is one of its best bets to do so at the Sochi 2014 Games.

Burke also said by phone Sunday about his third-place finish, “This is big for me,” and those words hold way more than just the obvious.

Amid his breakout 2010 season, Burke turned up with a painful condition, “compartment syndrome,” that’s not uncommon to Nordic skiers. The surgery and recovery had kept him out of the spotlight since.

But it was clear as the weekend’s events progressed that Burke was on the verge of breaking through. He finished fourth in the 10k sprint and seventh in the 12.5 pursuit.

A biathlon primer: only 30 guys start in the 15k mass start, and those 30 must qualify. Of the 30 in Sunday’s race, only two were North Americans — Burke and Canada’s Jean Philippe Leguellec, who would finish 21st.

Only one guy shot clean Sunday, Andreas Birnbacher of Germany. No surprise — he won.

Jakov Fak of Slovenia, the winner of Thursday’s sprint, missed just two shots. He finished just five seconds ahead of Burke.

Burke shot clean in the first two stages, then incurred a single penalty on the each of the last two stages.

He crossed the finish line a mere 3.3 seconds ahead of Martin Fourcade of France, the current World Cup leader. The solid weekend in Pokljuka lifted Burke to sixth in the overall World Cup standings.

What-ifs are usually of no consequence — but in this instance, it’s worth noting that if Burke had shot clean, his skiing is once again sound enough again that he might well have won Sunday’s race.

The only reason to bring that up is that finishing third is the kind of thing that makes a guy think he can get to first, and — just as importantly — challenge for that top spot consistently.

“It’s one thing,” Burke said, “to know your training is going well, to think you can do this in a race.

“It’s another to do it in a race.

“Now I know.”

Adam Nelson on the verge of gold

It is, Adam Nelson said Wednesday, bittersweet.

It has been more than eight years since they held the shot put competition at the Athens Games, and on Wednesday the International Olympic Committee announced that the winner, Ukraine’s Yuriy Bilonog, was now disqualified.

Nelson was the 2004 silver medalist. Now he stands to be moved up to gold.

Bilonog’s doping sample was among those re-tested earlier this year, the IOC said, and found positive — along with three others — for steroids. A fifth case remains pending.

That’s good, of course, because the IOC has done the right thing by Nelson and all athletes who compete cleanly.

But it took eight years-plus to get there. That raises fundamental questions about whether justice delayed is justice denied. If Nelson, already a silver medalist in Sydney in 2000, had been a gold medalist in Athens in 2004 for all these years, too, maybe he would have enjoyed considerably more marketing opportunity. Stands to reason, right?

Adam Nelson with some of his medals. Soon he may well be wearing gold from the 2004 Games

Meanwhile, the circumstances of the Bilonog case — and the three others, also field athletes, as in track and field — underscore an essential, and ongoing, truth about Olympic sport.

Doping remains a scourge that strikes at the very core of track and field. Other sports, too, in particular cycling and weightlifting.

The 2004 Athens Olympics yielded a record haul of doping cases. The new tests lift the number to 31. Eleven of those 31 were medal winners. Three of those 11 were gold medalists.

Meanwhile, the IOC on Wednesday put off any decision in the case of Lance Armstrong’s bronze medal from the Sydney 2000 road time trial. It said it needs cycling’s governing body, UCI, to formally notify Armstrong first that he has been disqualified in Sydney amid the extensive report from the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency that detailed Armstrong’s doping and prompted the loss of his seven Tour de France titles from 1999-2005.

In the 2004 cases, the matter of weightlifter Oleg Perepechenov of Russia remains under study.

Barring an unusual turn, the other four cases would now appear to be settled.

And it is abundantly obvious — and has to be pointed out — that all five involve athletes from Russia or countries of the former Soviet Union.

Two of the other four are women: discus thrower Irina Yatchenko of Belarus and shot putter Svetlana Krivelyova of Russia, both bronze medalists. Krivelyova is also the 1992 gold medalist in the event.

The other two: hammer throw silver medalist Ivan Tsikhan of Belarus and the Ukrainian Bilonog.

In the United States, we have assuredly endured our doping scandals — the Armstrong matter, most recently, and before that, the BALCO matter.

But so — at least in Olympic sport — is USADA’s effort to level the playing field. Can the same be said elsewhere? With conviction?

“This particular episode reveals something athletes have known for a long time,” Nelson said, explaining a moment later, “”There are more compliant sports and more compliant athletes,” meaning compliant with best-practices doping protocols.

He said, “The next focus of the drug-testing organizations ought to be to go into those countries and cultures where drugs are not vilified or regulated well, and say, ‘If you want to compete in our Olympic sports, change this.’

“This, to me, is a disgrace on multiple levels. And it’s something that could be avoided if more Olympic sports or organizations would adopt the policies we follow in our country.”

The shot put was one of the capstone events of those 2004 Games, held not in Athens but on the  grounds at Olympia, where the ancient Games began in 776 B.C.; the 2004 event marked the first time women threw on the field.

As evidence of how doping has corrupted the field events in particular, and why clean athletes such as Nelson and another American, Jillian Camarena-Williams, the  2011 world championships bronze medalist in the shot, deserve applause for fighting the good fight:

The women’s winner in 2004, Russia’s Irina Korzhanenko — who threw the shot 21.06 meters, or 69 feet, 1 inch — tested positive afterward for the steroid stanozolol. That’s the same steroid Ben Johnson tested positive for at the Seoul Olympics in 1988.

As David Wallechinsky notes in his authoritative history of the Olympic Games, this marked Korzhanenko’s second doping ban. Her first came at the 1999 world indoor championships, which cost her a silver medal and kept her from the 2000 Sydney Games.

Facing a lifetime ban because of the second positive test, Korzhanenko not only refused to give back the medal but was named a coach for the Russian track and field team, Wallechinsky writes.

Again, the third-place winner, Krivelyova, was busted Wednesday.

The fourth-place 2004 finisher, Nadezhda Ostapchuk of Belarus, the 2005 world champ, won the shot put at the London 2012 Games. Shortly after becoming Olympic champion, she tested positive for the steroid metenolone. Valerie Adams of New Zealand, the 2008 Beijing winner, was upgraded from London silver to gold.

On the men’s side in Olympia in 2004, Nelson took the lead on his first throw, 21.16, or 69-5 1/4. Then, though, he fouled on each of his next four tries.

Through five rounds, Bilonog remained one centimeter, 21.15, behind. On his sixth and final throw, Bilonog matched Nelson, going 21.16, 69-5 1/4.

The rules: ties to be broken by comparing each athlete’s second-best throw.

Through five rounds, Nelson had no second-best throw. He had only those four fouls.

On his sixth try, Nelson threw 21.30. But it, too, was ruled a foul. Nelson protested — but video showed Nelson had, indeed, fouled.

Bilonog was declared the winner, the first time in Olympic history a gold medal had been awarded on the basis of a second-best mark.

Until Wednesday.

Bilonog’s doping samples, re-tested in 2012, at the World Anti-Doping Agency-accredited laboratory in Lausanne, Switzerland, turned up evidence of the steroid oxandrolone.  The IOC was informed July 13 of the positive test on Bilonog’s A sample; his B sample was split into two parts; those samples turned up positive as well in tests done Nov. 1 and 2.

In Europe, according to no less an expert than Victor Conte, the figure at the center of the BALCO affair, the steroid goes by the name “Annavar.” Here in the States. it is known as “Oxandrin.”

Conte would know. When he was himself arrested, agents found 269 Oxandrin pills, in three square-shaped bottles, in his storage locker. Each pill, 2.5 milligrams, is shaped like a little football.

You take “quite a few at a time, for toning purposes,” men as many as 20 a day, Conte said.

Oxandrin is hardly a newly discovered steroid. The obvious question: how did Bilonog get away with it in 2004 only to be found out now?

Since the IOC and WADA are not giving away secrets, it’s speculation. But the ready answer would seem to be along the lines of how Johnson was caught in 1988 — testers probably inventing a technique for being able to measure at lower concentration than before.

“That would be my gut response to you,” Conte said, adding a moment later, “What they couldn’t see and couldn’t detect in 2004 they can now.”

What that likely means in practical terms:

It takes time for steroids to clear out of one’s system. That’s called “tapering.” If you were an athlete or coach, and knew it took, say, 14 days for a certain steroid to wash out instead of 10 because of the sensitivity of the testing instrument, you’d plan accordingly.

But if you didn’t know how many days were at issue, or if that number changed years after you’d already implemented your plan, then — like Yuri Bilonog — you would suddenly find yourself a gold medalist no longer.

“I would be thrilled if they would award me the gold medal,” Adam Nelson said.

There wouldn’t be the thrill of standing atop the podium at ancient Olympia. Even so, he said quietly, “I would have some small celebration.”

Vonn throws Lake Louise three-peat times two

Lindsey Vonn made it three-for-three on a snowy Sunday in Lake Louise, Canada, winning the super-G, a World Cup victory that capped a spectacular weekend for her individually and, for that matter, the U.S. women’s team.

Vonn — just as she did last year — won all three races in Lake Louise. She won downhills Friday and Saturday. And then she won the super-G Sunday in 1:22.82.

The Lindsey Vonn statistics and numbers show can sometimes seem overwhelming because she is, without question, the finest American racer of all time. Here is just a taste: she became Sunday the first skier ever, male or female, to win three World Cup races at the same venue in two different seasons.

American teammate Julia Mancuso came in second Sunday, 43-hundredths behind. Austria’s Anna Fenninger took third, two-hundredths behind Mancuso.

Thus: Americans went 1-2 in all three races this year in Lake Louise. Vonn and Stacey Cook went 1-2 in both downhills. Another American, Leanne Smith, finished eighth Sunday, in 1:24.41. Laurenne Ross was 13th, and Cook 29th.

The victory Sunday moves Vonn into second in the women’s all-time World Cup wins list, with 56. Austria’s Annemarie Moser-Pröll leads with 62.

Ingemar Stenmark of Sweden is far and away the overall leader with 86 World Cup victories.

Just to make the top-three in the World Cup is difficult enough. Cook, for instance, made 150 World Cup starts before her two top-two downhill finishes this weekend.

A happy Lindsey Vonn in the finish area after the super-G in Lake Louise // screen-shot Universal Sports

It is a measure of how crazy good Vonn is to say that she had been tied with Swiss star Vreni Schneider for all of one day, with 55.

It is another measure of Vonn’s brilliance that about three weeks ago, she was in a Vail, Colo., hospital, with stomach pains. When she got out, she literally was having trouble walking from one end of her condo to the other.

“This weekend was a huge boost for my confidence,” she said. “I was definitely feeling extremely low after being in the hospital and my poor result in Aspen,” a reference to the tour stop last weekend, where she struggled — hardly a surprise — in the one event she ran, a giant slalom, visibly exhausted at the end.

“But I knew if there was a place to turn it around, it was Lake Louise. So I just tried to get myself every opportunity to rest and recover for the races this weekend.”

She also said, “Every athlete has their favorite hill where they feel confident and comfortable. I know the hill like the back of my hand and have confidence knowing I have won here in the past.”

More Vonn numbers:

She became the fourth female skier with 100 World Cup podiums. Moser-Pröll has 114; another great Austrian champion, Renate Götschl, has 110; Schneider, 101.

Vonn’s victory Sunday was her 14th in Lake Louise — 11 downhills, three super-Gs — and seventh straight on the mountain.

The seven straight wins is a women’s World Cup record for a single venue. The prior mark: six, held by Sweden’s Anja Paerson at Maribor, Slovenia.

The three wins moved Vonn up significantly in the overall 2012-13 World Cup standings. Slovenia’s Tina Maze leads with 397 points; Germany’s Maria Höfl-Riesch is second, with 319; Vonn now stands third, with 310.

Vonn won Sunday wire-to-wire.

She was ahead at the first interval by three-tenths of a second, then at the second — a section of the course that gave her trouble all weekend — by only three-hundredths. At the third, she had built her lead back up to 42-hundredths and pretty much kept it that way through her tuck through the finish.

Next week the tour heads to St. Moritz, Switzerland. Vonn won the downhill there last year by a second and a half, over Höfl-Riesch.

Six more downhills and seven more super-Gs await on the World Cup calendar.

1-2 again: “Amazing” runs from Vonn, Cook

Even when Lindsey Vonn is not at her best, she’s still too good.

Vonn skidded hard Saturday on the downhill course at the World Cup stop in Lake Louise, Canada. Anyone else probably would have crashed and gone flying into the nets.

Not Lindsey.

She recovered and not only went on to finish but to win, and by a whopping 52-hundredths of a second.

For the second straight day, American Stacey Cook finished second, another terrific performance. Before this weekend, Cook’s best World Cup finish had been a fourth, in 2006, in Lake Louise.

Cook, 28, had been building toward these sorts of results.

She was a member of the 2006 and 2006 Olympic teams, 10th in last-season’s downhill standings, fourth in this week’s final Lake Louise training run. She said after Friday’s second-place run, “I really shut my brain off today — I know I can ski with these girls. I have been so close for so long, so today I decided it was time. I let my ability take over.”

Vonn, after Friday’s racing, said of Cook, “I’m so proud of Stacey. She has had the ability to be a podium skier for so long. She really deserved to be there today.”

And Saturday, too.

“I hope this is the tip of the iceberg for me,” Cook said. “My coaches have told me like for a long time that I’m like fine wine — that I get better with age.

“This has been a long time coming and I’m just now starting to believe that this is actually happening.”

Lindsey Vonn and Stacey Cook (top, with skis), 1-2 for the second straight day, highlighting the top-20 American showing at the Lake Louise downhill — Julia Mancuso (ninth), Alice McKennis (11th), Laurenne Ross (18th) and Leanne Smith (20th) // photo courtesy U.S. Ski Team

For her part, Vonn was behind Saturday at the first two checkpoints, by 18-hundredths at the first, by 21-hundredths at the second.

By the third, she had worked her way into the lead, up by eight-hundredths.

Then, though — disaster.

Or what for anyone else would be disaster.

Vonn slipped and got herself turned virtually sideways on the hill.

For an instant, she was on one ski, tottering.

Of course, her momentum and speed were at a standstill.

Cook said, “There was a second there that I actually thought I might win this thing, but Lindsey is amazing. When she made that mistake my heart actually stopped for a second. She’s amazing — she’s the only athlete that could stop on-course and then still win.”

Indeed, Vonn somehow righted herself and aimed straight down the mountain again.

Later, Vonn would say, “I felt like I just hit a few bumps and caught my inside ski and almost went into the fence, then somehow kept going. It was definitely interesting, but I didn’t give up. I haven’t won with that big of a mistake before.”

There were two turns remaining before the flats. Those she turned into flat-out speed.

Numbers don’t lie.

At the fourth checkpoint, Vonn was 52-hundredths of a second behind.

By the fifth, she was ahead by a tenth of a second.

In between, there’s a radar gun that measures how fast each skier goes. Vonn was clocked at 135.6 kilometers per hour, or 84.2 mph.

At the finish, Vonn was 52-hundredths ahead of Cook.

So — from the fourth checkpoint to the finish, she made back a full second (and four extra hundredths).

After she crossed the finish line, Vonn shook her head and stuck out her tongue in apparent disbelief.

She said, “Over the last few years I’ve really worked on getting stronger and that helps recover from mistakes like that one. It’s not the way you want to ski, but it helps my confidence to know that I can recover from them.”

Vonn has accomplished some outlandish things in Lake Louise both this season, and last. She won Friday’s downhill by 1.73 seconds. She won both last season’s downhills as well, the first by 1.95 seconds, the second by 1.68.

But to win, when all seemed lost, and by .52-hundredths — it’s yet another chapter in the annals of America’s greatest alpine ski racer.

Remember, too: just a little over two weeks ago, Vonn was in a Vail, Colo., hospital, being treated for stomach pains. When she was released, she could barely walk.

The victory Saturday marked Vonn’s 55th career World Cup win, tying her with Swiss star Vreni Schneider for second on the women’s all-time wins list. Austria’s Annemarie Moser-Pröll leads with 62.

It was her 13th Lake Louise victory — 11th downhill, two super-G — and sixth straight win on the mountain.

Slovenia’s Tina Maze leads the still-young 2012-13 World Cup overall standings with 347 points. Vonn stands fourth, with 210.

The third leg of the three-race Lake Louise series goes off Sunday, a super-G.

Lindsey Vonn makes a statement

After yet another spectacular performance by Lindsey Vonn Friday in Lake Louise, Canada, one seriously has to wonder: why can’t she ski against the guys?

Vonn won the first of three World Cup races over the weekend in Lake Louise, a downhill, by an absurd 1.73 seconds.

American Stacey Cook took second — her first World Cup podium, and the first 1-2 finish for U.S. women in a World Cup downhill since 2006. Germany’s Maria Höfl-Riesch and Liechtenstein’s Tina Weirather tied for third, one-hundredth of a second behind Cook.

Vonn had petitioned skiing’s international governing authority, FIS, for permission to race here last week against the men. FIS turned her down, essentially saying  men race against men and that’s that.

Since then, Max Gartner, the president of Alpine Canada, has said he’s in talks with Red Bull, which sponsors Vonn, to put together a race, and to hold it at Lake Louise.

Such a race would be a marketing and publicity boon for a sport that needs it, especially here in the United States.

Alpine skiing is great stuff. Lindsey Vonn is a great champion. FIS should put her front and center, someway, somehow. What’s so difficult about that?

Lindsey Vonn skis to her 54th World Cup victory in Lake Louise, Canada // photo Alpine Canada courtesy US Ski Team

Aksel Lund Svindal, the two-time overall men’s World Cup champion from Norway, gets it, and told the Canadian Press: “I’ve trained with her. My experience is if you are on a hill that she likes and you don’t ski good, she can beat you. It’s realistic that she would be in the race.”

Vonn said after flying down the course Friday, “Well, I kind of felt like I had to win today. I mean, like you say you want to race with the men — you can’t really not win the women’s races. I knew that. I was trying to prove a point, mostly to myself but to everyone else who doesn’t think I should race with the men. I don’t know. I just do my best.”

Lindsey Vonn’s best, especially at Lake Louise, is so good one struggles to keep finding words to describe just how good.

The first victory of her career — ever — came in Lake Louise, in 2004.

Friday’s victory marked her 54th. She now stands one behind Vreni Schneider on the all-time women’s list.

It was her 12th in Lake Louise — 10 in the downhill, two in super-G.

It was her fifth straight victory there and first of the still-young 2012-13 World Cup season.

Last year, she won the first of the two Lake Louise downhills in 1:53.19. Her winning margin in that race was an absurd 1.95 seconds.

She followed that up by winning the Saturday downhill by “only” 1.68 seconds, and then winning Sunday’s super-G.

This year, her winning time Friday: 1:52.61. At the second speed check, she was flying along at 84 mph.

Making all this even more outlandish: Vonn was in a Vail, Colo., hospital just a little over two weeks ago with stomach pains. In a column she writes in the Denver Post, she said that after she was released it made her tired just walking down the hall of her condo: ‘I felt like I was 100 years old, and I couldn’t even think about skiing.”

At the end of last Saturday’s race in Aspen, she collapsed in exhaustion.

This, however, has always been the Lindsey Vonn way.

She has faced a succession of extraordinary challenges: a crash in the downhill in Torino in 2006, a gashed thumb at the world championships in Val d’Isere in 2009, a banged-up shin before the Olympics in Vancouver in 2010.

Invariably, she rises to the occasion.

After the race Friday, Vonn was asked — naturally — how she felt, and if you were the other women on the tour, maybe you would be giving some thought to the notion of whether she ought to race the guys at Lake Louise, because this is what she had to say: “It just gives me confidence.”

A fresh look at the Lake Placid model

LAKE PLACID, N.Y. — The Olympic spirit is at once real and yet tremendously difficult to define or quantify.

If there is ever a place that has that spirit, however, it is here, in this little town of not even 3,000 people.

Here, the bronze medal that Andrew Weibrecht won in the super-G at the Vancouver 2010 Olympics hangs in a frame behind the check-in desk at the Mirror Lake Inn, run by his parents, Ed and Lisa. Just steps off Main Street — literally, just a couple steps — sits the oval where Eric Heiden won all five speed-skating races in 1980; every winter that oval is frozen over and used by kids and, well, anyone with a pair of skates.

A short drive away is the bobsled track. Even closer, standing sentinel over town, is the ski jump. It looks out, over among other things, Whiteface Mountain and and the ski runs and of course, straight down below, the simple cauldron that was used at those 1980 Winter Games, a reminder of how no-frills the Olympics used to be.

Thirty-two years after those Games, all these facilities are in working order. Everything is here, everything works and everything is a short drive — or a walk — from everything else. And, of course, everyone, it seems, wants to play hockey in the arena that Mike Eruzione and the U.S. team made famous.

But that’s no miracle. That’s testament to vision and public policy and the notion that the Olympic spirit matters — indeed, that legacy matters.

The view from the top of the Lake Placid ski jump

The International Olympic Committee now stresses the notion of legacy — that a Games shouldn’t just come to a particular town and then leave so-called white elephants, a bunch of facilities and venues idling away, or worse, torn down after being built at a cost of millions.

Lake Placid, host to the Winter Games in 1932 and 1980, was way ahead of its time.

Maybe it’s time to take a fresh look at the Lake Placid model.

The last editions of the Winter Olympics have gone to big cities — Vancouver, Torino, Salt Lake, Nagano.

Before that came Lillehammer, and the small-town feel of Lillehammer is what the organizers of the Pyeongchang Games say they aim, in part, to deliver in 2018. Even so, those Korean Games will involve considerable infrastructure costs.

The capital costs of the Sochi 2014 project absolutely will run to the billions. It’s unclear if the true costs will ever be known, since accounting will be at the discretion of the Russian government.

The bobsled run used for the 2006 Torino Winter Games cost $100 million to build, $2 million to operate annually. It was announced last month that it is due to be dismantled.

Contrast: the 20-curve, 4,773-foot bobsled track in Lake Placid, re-built for the February, 2000, Goodwill Games, is now a mainstay on the World Cup circuit, the tour making its usual stop here recently.

The track cost about $30 million, according to Ted Blazer, the president and chief executive officer of the New York state Olympic Regional Development Authority.

ORDA’s annual budget now runs to about $32 million.

Each fiscal year since 1982-83, the state has kicked in millions of dollars to ORDA, recognizing the value in the Olympic brand in Lake Placid.

Again, and for overseas critics of the American style of Olympic budgeting: every year for 30 years that has been a line item in the state budget, proposed by the governor, reviewed by the legislature; each year, it has been approved, and in some years with significant capital outlays or debt-service obligations.

Since the 1982-83 fiscal year, the state’s contribution totals just under $228.3 million.

That is more than just legacy. That is building for the present, and the future.

That commitment has put Lake Placid in position to bid for, say, the 2020 or 2024 Youth Winter Olympic Games. There would be issues, perhaps significant — where to house that many athletes, for instance, because any new development would have to contend with the fundamental issue that Lake Placid is surrounded by state parkland. Nonetheless, such a bid would seem to be on the radar.

“Having the athletes rub elbows with all the tourists in town, we’re doing it in this beautiful pristine environment — it’s who we are,” Blazer said. “When you think of Lake Placid — it’s the whole game, it’s one neat package right here. It’s not the big city where it gets lost. It gives us identity.”

Added Jeff Potter, ORDA’s director of corporate development, “We have hosted the two Olympic Games. It’s just in our DNA to continue that legacy.”

An aerial view of the 20-curve bobsled track, now a mainstay on the World Cup circuit

The U.S. Olympic Committee opened its current training facility in town in 1989.

Steve Holcomb, the current world and Olympic four-man bobsled champion, said, “Lake Placid is such a small town — so far out of the way — but it’s so Olympic and so big. They have done a great job. The ‘Miracle on Ice’ — they took that and ran with it. They have the Olympic Training Center there and they work really, really hard to make sure they maximize what they have there.”

The culture in Lake Placid — families and volunteers committed to winter sports — also stands as a key part of why this little town so far out of the way remains hugely relevant in Olympic circles.

Simply put, you grow up here with the Olympic Games in mind. Billy Demong, a gold and silver medalist at the Vancouver Games in the Nordic combined, made his first Olympic team at the Nagano 1998 Games, when he was just 17.

Lowell Bailey and Tim Burke have both been to the 2006 and 2010 Games in biathlon, and are aiming for Sochi in 2014; Bailey is from Lake Placid, Burke from Paul Smiths, a hamlet a few miles to the northwest.

“Growing up in Lake Placid,” Bailey said, “you are surrounded by people at every step of the Olympic journey, the Olympic path. There are gold medalists who live in town. There are people who have gotten an Olympic medal and come back to town. You have the Olympics from the organizational standpoint. There is everything in between. There were athletes ahead of us. Billy Demong was the first of us … that was something we saw. You saw what was possible, and that made it so much more motivating.”

Echoed Burke, “Growing up around Lake Placid, it seems so much more attainable. In other towns, it’s something you might see on TV every four years. For us — it’s something we live every day.”

Like “barely moving” … at 90 mph

LAKE PLACID, N.Y. — At the first turn, my head cracked against the right side of the bobsled.

Then the sled swung the other way, and my head slammed against the left side of the sled.

Good thing I was wearing a helmet. But for 46 seconds, I pretty much felt like a bobble-head doll as we rocketed down the bobsled course, the same one they were running a World Cup event on that weekend.

I was the No. 2 guy in a four-man sled that late afternoon and, frankly, they were being nice to me — Bryan Berghorn, the driver; Michael Burke, the No. 3 guy; and Shane Hook, the brakeman. We didn’t start at the top of the course. We put in a few turns down. We only reached about 70 mph. Not 80 or more, like they do when they really mean it.

“I’d do rides all night if I could,” Berghorn, a Lake Placid guy, said, and now having done it once, experienced the wild roller-coaster ride, it begs the question — how in the world do you learn to maneuver these things? (By the way, not to brag — OK, I’m bragging: I did not get woozy or worse.)

It’s no Night Train but it did get down the track at about 70 mph

With the Sochi 2014 Games approaching, bobsled is increasingly soaking up the spotlight. The U.S. team features standouts such as Steve Holcomb, the reigning four-man Olympic and world champion, and his powerhouse pushman Steve Langton; moreover, track and field stars such as Tianna Madison and Lolo Jones are making a bid to join the 2014 winter team.

Victory in a bobsled race typically comes by fractions of a second.

Control matters.

So how do you achieve that control?

Because, just to be obvious, ice is really slippery.

Well, to be equally obvious, you don’t achieve that control overnight.

It takes a lot of practice. With that practice comes experience. And with that experience comes feel.

And then, finally, comes confidence.

Jazmine Fenlator started on the bobsled in 2007 after running track in college. Her first ride, she said, “was not comfortable — in all honesty, it let like someone stuffed me in a garbage can and someone rolled me down the hill.” But, she said, “I definitely enjoyed the thrill.”

That was in the back of a sled, of course. Someone else drove.

After a few trips in Park City, Utah, in the front in 2008, she finally went to formal driving school in 2009 in Lake Placid. “What takes getting used to,” she said, “is staying calm and staying relaxed. You don’t feel the G forces as much but you do feel the pressure.”

She said, “I definitely relate it to being a teen-age driver with your permit to being a driver five years later,” adding, “Over time you become more aware and more comfortable.”

With corresponding results.

After working her way up to several World Cup starts last year, Fenlator and Jones took silver at the World Cup event here in Lake Placid; teammates Elana Meyers and Madison took the bronze.

For his part, Holcomb said, “It’s just like anything else. You don’t start at the top your first time. You start where you did. And then you go down a few times. Your first couple runs — you’re absolutely terrible, you’re bouncing off walls. It’s a learning curve. And then you get to the point where you understand what you’re doing.”

Think about what it’s like, even as an experienced driver, when you first merge onto an interstate highway, he said. You look to your left and all the cars are going 70 or 75 miles per hour. Everything seems to be going so fast.

Now give it 10 minutes.

You’re cruising down the highway at 75. The speed is relative. You’re so in control that you can fiddle with the radio, or eat an apple, or whatever, all the while keeping your eye on the road — and, again, you’re doing 75. More, if the highway patrol isn’t around, right?

That’s what it’s like when you have experience on the track. Doing 75, or even 80, doesn’t seem at all perilous.

In fact, it’s just like what football players say. The game slows down.

At the start house in Lake Placid, before the 46 seconds in the sled: Michael Burke; driver Bryan Berghorn; brakeman Shane Hook; your correspondent.

Holcomb won the two-man race in Lake Placid, and then again at the next tour stop, in Park City, and would go on to win the two-man for a third straight race, in Whistler, B.C.

Before that third race, on a track widely considered the fastest in the world, he said, “We’re going 85 to 90 miles per hour here in Whistler. It’s fast. But I can see everything in front of me. I’m in control. I know exactly what is going on.

“It feels,” he said, “like we are barely moving.”

U.S. cross-country ski relay makes history

The United States of America put on a man on the moon 43 summers ago.

You wouldn’t think, really, that it would take until Sunday to put four American women on the podium in a World Cup cross-country relay ski race for the very first time.

Jessie Diggins, the American anchor, outsprinted Marthe Kristoffersen of Norway II as the U.S. women’s 4 x 5k relay team claimed third place Sunday at the World Cup relay in Gallivare, Sweden.

It just goes to show you two things:

One, nothing is impossible. Americans genuinely can excel at cross-country skiing.

Two, when Americans make something a priority, they are as good at it as anybody in the world. This is the lesson of the U.S. Nordic combined team at the Vancouver 2010 Olympics, and this is what the U.S. cross-country team is aiming to show the world in Sochi in 2014.

“We skied our hearts out and I am so proud to be a part of something this big,” Diggins said.

A happy U.S. women’s cross-country relay team makes history in Sweden — a first-ever World Cup podium finish

Norway I won, in a time of 45.32.2; Sweden took second, in 45.51.6.

The Americans: 46.00.4.

Norway II: 46.00.9, just five-tenths of a second behind.

All the signs were there for this on Saturday, when Kikkan Randall finished third in the 10k and Holly Brooks fifth. Liz Stephen had been among the race leaders but broke a pole and ended up 21st.

Randall was last year’s World Cup sprint champion.

She and Brooks, in an interview late Saturday, had talked about how so much was changing.

You can see it, they said, in attitudes, and not just within the U.S. team — where there is the absolute, unconditional belief that they can win — but from others, and in particular the Scandinavians, who long had dismissed the Americans.

Now, both said, other teams wanted to know whether the Americans would be interested in training with them.

That never used to happen, they said.

That, they said, is a sure sign of emerging respect.

You can see it, too, in resource — with, for instance, the physical therapist now traveling with the U.S. team. That never used to happen, either.

The previous U.S. women’s relay best had been a fifth — last winter at Nove Mesto, Czech Republic. But that was without Randall, who was out for that race.

Even so, the Americans started Sunday in bib 3, on the front line, with Norway I and Sweden. “Some people at the race today were skeptical that we could put together the four world-class relay legs that it takes to reach the podium in this women’s field,” the U.S. head coach, Chris Grover, said. “But the women handled the pressure, and did it.”

Brooks went first, skiing the first of the two classic legs. She skied solidly, 11.2 seconds out, in eight place.

Randall then skied the fastest classic leg of the day. She moved the Americans up into second, 8.2 seconds back of Norway I.

As the race moved to freestyle, Stephen got the Americans to within 4.2 seconds of Norway I.

Diggins went out knowing that Sweden’s anchor, Charlotte Kalla, the Vancouver 2010 10k gold medalist, would probably overtake her. Which Kalla did.

The idea was to hold on to third place.

Kristoffersen actually caught Diggins. Together, they climbed the final hill into the stadium.

Diggins would later tell fasterskier.com, which specializes in coverage of cross-country and biathlon: “At the end I could really feel it. I thought, I do no want to lose us a medal here, the girls and the team, the whole team worked so hard this year. I’m not going to screw this up right now. I was able to get just enough energy to get to the end. And then I thought I was going to die. I think I might have been crying.”

After Diggins collapsed onto the snow, the other Americans spent maybe 10 minutes in the finish area. There were hugs. There were tears. The TV cameras couldn’t get enough.

Later, Stephen told FIScrosscountry.com, “I have always looked at the TV and seen people crying after big races. I didn’t understand that feeling until today.”