MUSKEGON CHRONICLE / SUNDAY, DECEMBER 15, 2013 / C7
Olympics BOBSLED
American women on top of the world United States sweep medals as Sochi Olympics near The Associated Press
Shaun White, shown during the halfpipe competition at the 2010 Olympics, is back in training for the upcoming Vancouver Games. White, who has won two Olympic gold medals would love to add the first slopestyle medal. (AP Photo/Gerry Broome)
OLYMPICS NOTEBOOK
With addition of slopestyle at Sochi, White again the favorite
A golden opportunity By Nancy Armour
style is making its Olympic debut in Sochi, White has had to put the disciWith two Olympic gold medals, more pline on hold as he prepared for previthan a dozen titles at the X Games — ous Winter Games. He didn’t hit a jump Winter and Summer for close to two years before Vancouver, — and crossover appeal in fact. When he returned, he found he’d that makes sponsors fallen far behind. drool, Shaun White “I had to learn these new tricks,” knows everyone will White said. “I set out to do that and right be coming after him in as I completed that and won a major Sochi. contest in Europe, the sport took anothSo, what else is new? er little turn. People were doing these “I can’t tell you the double flips in the beginning, and now White last time I didn’t feel they’re doing triple flips.” hunted,” he said. “Ever At the Winter X Games last January, since I was a kid, I was someone to beat. not only did White not win, he finished Maybe I wasn’t ‘the guy,’ but I was some- a distant fifth. He didn’t even make it to body to be looked at as a threat. But for the starting line at the Winter Games me, that was always something that in New Zealand in August, crashing in inspired me. I knew that they were look- training. ing toward me and I was looking toward “It’s hard for me to even think about them, and I knew that would help me anything else, in a sense. I don’t know get to the place I needed to learn new the last contest I went to where I wasn’t tricks and to progress in the sport.” trying to win,” he said. “I don’t really The only difference now is that White look at any other spot but that. That’s will be chased in two events. In addition what I’m striving for.” to a third straight gold in snowboardA LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN ing, White is hoping to become the first Olympic champion in slopestyle. In this fantasy league, Peyton “That’s such a huge challenge for me, to Manning and Adrian Peterson go do halfpipe and slopestyle,” he said. “It’s a undrafted. Instead, the top picks are rarity in the sport to do both disciplines, players like Aksel Lund Svindal, of as well as do them at the Olympics. ... Norway, or Ted Ligety, of the U.S. That’s what I love about this sport. Every Now, those skiers really can score single time around there’s something points for a team. brand new that presents itself.” A few years ago, U.S. skier Steven In slopestyle, snowboarders move Nyman was sitting around the lodge in through rails, big jumps and bumps on Lake Louise, Alberta, on a minus-30 their way down the hill. As dominant as degree day. Rather bored, he started White is in the halfpipe, it would seem throwing around ideas with teammate to follow that he’d be unbeatable in Nolan Kasper, when they hit on the conslopestyle, too. Not exactly. cept of a ski version of fantasy football. Oh, he was once. But because slopeWith the help of his brother, Nyman The Associated Press
created a fantasy ski league that’s soaring in popularity. When he first launched his site, only a handful of players took part. Last year, he had 7,000 players sign up, and this season it’s already jumped to 15,000. “This is going great,” said Nyman, who’s planning to go mobile with the site so players can pick their skiers on their phones. “I don’t make any money doing it. People yell at me all the time, accuse me of cheating. Why? I don’t know. But it’s just fun.” BURKE NAMED TO BIATHLON TEAM
Tim Burke is going to the Sochi Olympics. The first American in 26 years to win a medal at the biathlon world championships was one of the first three athletes named to the Sochi team by U.S. Biathlon. Lowell Bailey and Susan Dunklee also earned spots at the Winter Games. The U.S. has never won an Olympic medal in biathlon, a sport that combines cross-country skiing with rifle marksmanship and traditionally has been dominated by the Europeans. But the Americans have been inching closer to the podium over the last five years. First came Leif Nordgren’s bronze medal at the Youth/Junior Biathlon World Championships in 2008, followed the next year by Jeremy Teela’s bronze at a World Cup event — the best result for an American at a World Cup in 17 years. PASSPORT, PLEASE
Lithuania’s president has granted citizenship to U.S. ice dancer Isabella Tobias, allowing her and Deividas Stagniunas to represent the Baltic country at the Sochi Olympics.
DOWNHILL SKIING
Vonn to skip St. Moritz, expected to be ready for Olympics The past World Champion still is recovering from broken bones in a crash
Lindsey Vonn, of the United States, reacts in the finish area following her run at the women’s World Cup downhill ski race in Lake Louise, Alberta last week. (AP Photo)
By Howard Fendrich
The Associated Press
Mapping out her Olympics preparation after a threerace test, Lindsey Vonn will skip this weekend’s World Cup stop at St. Moritz, Switzerland, and is planning to return to the circuit in a downhill at Val d’Isere, France, on Dec. 21. The 29-year-old American returned to competition at Lake Louise, Alberta, last week, 10 months after tearing two ligaments in her right knee and breaking a bone in that leg during a crash at the world championships. She also had a setback when she partially re-tore one of those surgically reconstructed ligaments in a fall during practice on Nov. 19. Vonn finished 40th in a
downhill Friday in her World Cup season debut, then 11th in another downhill Saturday, and fifth in a super-G on Sunday. Asked after that last event what those 72 hours of racing told her, Vonn replied: “It tells me that I do need a couple more starts. I want to make sure that I get on the podium at least once, if not win, before ... Sochi. For me, mentally, I really want to have that in my back pocket.” She also indicated she did not think she needed much more in the way of World Cup work before heading to the
Olympics, which start in less than two months. “I know that I’m skiing well, so I know that I don’t need to push myself and try to push the limits of my knee to race as many as races as I can. ... I’m ready for Sochi,” Vonn said. “I may race in one or two races, something like that.” She added the she wanted to limit her schedule so as to “take the risk away from any long-term damage on my knee.” The races she’ll miss at St. Moritz are a super-G and giant slalom. She’s won the
downhill at Val d’Isere three times — in 2005, 2006 and 2010. After that initial victory there, Vonn was awarded a cow by local farmers. Vonn won two medals at the 2010 Vancouver Games, including a gold in the downhill, and she is a four-time overall World Cup champion. Her 59 race wins are three shy of the World Cup career record. Vonn explained that she would work with her coaches to figure out when to race ahead of going to Sochi. “We take everything day to day and week to week with her. There won’t be nearly as much volume, because the one thing we don’t have to do with Lindsey is teach her how to ski,” U.S. Ski Team women’s speed coach Chip White said at Lake Louise. “We’re just going to try to make sure that the training and racing that she does is quality and trying not to take an unnecessary risk with her.”
Standing arm-in-arm atop the medal stand, the six women chanted in unison. “U-S-A!” “U-S-A!” “U-S-A!” No U.S. women’s bobsled team had swept the podium in a World Cup race in nearly 13 years — until last weekend, when the American dominance was on full display. Elana Meyers and Aja Evans won their second gold medal in two days, and Jamie Greubel and Lolo Jones tied for second with Jazmine Fenlator and Lauryn Williams to complete the U.S. sweep. And with the Sochi Olympics less than two months away, here’s a very good sign for the U.S.: Out of the 18 medals awarded in bobsledding and skeleton at Park City, against the best racers in the world, American sliders took 10 of them. Said 2010 Olympic bobsled gold medalist Steven Holcomb: “It was a good day.” A good weekend, to be precise. A very, very good weekend, to be more precise. The last time American women’s bobsledders swept a World Cup race was Feb. 17, 2001, in Park City, when Jean Racine, Bonny Warner and Jill Bakken were the pilots going 1-2-3. “It feels great to be on the podium,” said Jones, who won her second World Cup medal as a push athlete. “With bobsled, you never know when you are going to be on the podium and how long it will be before you are back on again. It makes you cherish the moments when you are doing well. Our drivers are doing outstanding this year.” A schedule quirk calls for certain sliding disciplines
The United States’ Elana Meyers, front, and Aja Evans won the gold medal at the Park City, Utah, World Cup races. The team led a U.S. women sweep of the event — less than two months from the start of the Sochi Olympics. (AP Photo)
to race twice at various World Cup stops this winter, and in Park City, women’s bobsled was due for the double-up. So, after winning gold Friday night, Meyers and Evans were back at it early Saturday and finished two runs in 1 minute, 38.61 seconds, good enough for a 0.63-second margin of victory. Greubel and Jones finished in 1:39.24, the same time as Fenlator and Williams, an Olympic gold medalist and former world champion in track who was making her World Cup debut. Early reviews for the sprinter-turned-bobsledder — Williams was recruited to the sport by Jones, the twotime Olympic hurdler for the U.S. — were smashing. “I’ll tell you something: Lauryn Williams is a rising star in what I see in bobsledding,” longtime bobsled analyst John Morgan said during the race broadcast. “She’s got the build for it, the speed, the explosion. ... Lauryn Williams, welcome to bobsledding.”
OLYMPICS
Athletes find online funding By Rick Maese
The Washington Post
For all of the millions of dollars swirling around the corporation-cloaked Olympic Games, athletes for years have scrounged through the couch cushions to help finance their dreams. They hold rallies, visit hometown businesses, host fundraising pasta dinners. Bill Kerig knew of the challenges facing athletes, particular those who compete in pricey winter sports. In 2010, he was making a documentary on ski jumper Lindsey Van and was struck by how much time Van spent searching for money. He couldn’t shake the image of Van standing behind a table at a farmers market soliciting donations with a couple other Olympic hopefuls. “I was offended for them,” Kerig said. “These are world champions begging for two dollars to do what they love. ‘Anything you have would really help.’ I thought, where’s the crowd-funding for athletes?” Kerig had used online crowd-funding to help finance his film, “Ready to Fly.” In recent years, sites such as Kickstarter and Indiegogo had proven to be a successful, efficient fundraising tool, particularly for those in creative fields. Kerig launched RallyMe.com specifically for athletes, and still in its nascent stages, it already has proven to be a
boon for Sochi-bound athletes and future Olympians. Van, who is expected to represent the United States when women’s ski jumping makes its Olympic debut in February, said her travel, equipment and lodging for a year carries an $85,000 price tag. She set a modest $13,000 goal on RallyMe but instead raised more than $20,000 with the help of 60 donors who simply had to log in and click a few buttons to contribute. “It’s a lot easier to get $20 from 100 people than it is to get $100 from 20 people,” said Van, 29. She was able to scale back hours at her parttime job in Park City, Utah, and focus energy on training instead of fundraising. “I wish we would’ve had it sooner,” she added. Online fundraising has become increasingly popular. Last year, crowd-funding raised $2.7 billion for various campaigns worldwide, an 81 percent increase over the previous year, according to a report from crowdsourcing. org, an independent organization that monitors crowdfunding online. RallyMe, which gives athletes 92 cents of every dollar raised, has raised more than a half-million dollars for athletes since formally launching last November. Kerig estimates the site features about 100 Olympic hopefuls — nearly one-third of its network of “rallies.”