Canada (and the US) come away with bragging rights

Could it be any better than this?

Canada -- host country of the Vancouver Games and Our Favorite Neighbors -- comes away with the highest tally of gold medals.

Also, a stunning OT win over the US hockey team.

The US, meanwhile, comes away with the highest overall tally of medals, beating the second-place Germans by a whopping seven medals.

North America scored a whopping 67 medals overall, humbling the mighty Europeans and Asians.

Here's a warm, heartfelt tip of the hat to Canada.

Thanks for having us over for a great couple of weeks of fantastic sport.

Long after we've forgotten the rain, we'll remember the fierce, passionate competition and the neighborly spirit.

Great job, Canada!

This is pretty good too...

We reported this morning that Bill Demong -- besides winning America's first gold medal in an Olympic Nordic ski event -- also proposed to his girlfriend yesterday in Whistler. The Albany Times Union has some touching details, attributed to theskichannel.com:

The U.S. Ski Team House in Whistler, BC was packed tonight as friends and family gathered to celebrate Billy Demong's Nordic Combined gold medal and U.S. Teammate Johnny Spillane's silver.

When Demong took the mic many expected him to thank his loved ones for their support in helping make his Olympic dreams come true. Demong's gold is the first ever Nordic Olympic gold medal won for the USA.

Instead, Demong called his girlfriend Katie to the stage, and as he got down on one knee, onlookers screamed. The cheering was so loud in fact that Demong's proposal was barely audible.

Demong had been waiting for the right moment to propose for nearly three months, and kept the ring under his bed. Today, before the race, he carried the diamond to the start in a bag with his race gear, and figured there was no better time to propose.

Jeez.

It literally doesn't get any better than this

Here's Vermontville's Bill Demong holding the gold. Thanks to Nancie Battaglia for the amazing images. Demong was chosen to bear the flag at Sunday's closing ceremony.

From the Associated Press:

The U.S. Olympic Committee announced Thursday night that Demong had been selected by fellow American Olympians. Earlier in the day, he won the country's first gold medal in a Nordic sport. Demong was part of a 1-2 finish for the United States in the large hill competition at Nordic combined.

Demong, who also proposed to his girlfriend Thursday night, called it "a whirlwind of a day."

The Demongs: Olympic parents

Over on our news page, you'll find a ton of information and photographs about North Country Olympians.

But I wanted to show you a couple of joyous parent faces. There on the right is Helen Demong, Bill Demong's mom.

Below (the bearded guy in the middle) is Leo Demong, Bill's dad.

I'm guessing being a parent doesn't get much better than that.

Photo credits: Nancie Battaglia & ORDA

Two Adirondack villages score 1 in 10 American Olympic medals

Corrected...

Thanks to Bill Demong and Andrew Weibrecht, two northern New York villages -- Lake Placid and Saranac Lake -- now account for 10% of the United States' medal tally.

Demong claimed a gold and a silver in two Nordic combined events. Weibrecht, a downhill skier, captured a bronze in the Super G.

Three decades after the last Olympic Games in Lake Placid, the Adirondacks remain an undisputed winter sport powerhouse.

Demong's victory was the first gold in U.S. history in Nordic combined -- a historic feat in a sport dominated by the Europeans and Scandinavians.

Weibrecht, who graced the cover of Sports Illustrated this week, is the young face of America's downhill ski program.

The celebration parades begin tomorrow at 4pm in Lake Placid, as Weibrecht will be heralded. A parade is also planned for Saranac Lake.

Demong wins gold!!

...in the individual Nordic Combined long hill 10k event today -- from the offical website results, it looks like Vermontville native Bill Demong won the gold medal on the strength of the cross country ski leg. He was sixth in the jumping portion of the event earlier this afternoon.
And his team mate Johnny Spillane took the silver medal.
Count on more during the 8 O'Clock Hour...

The first Miracle on Ice -- this afternoon at 2

This just in from our Program Director, Jackie Sauter. On today's show, "The Story" recalls the pre-cursor to the famous Lake Placid "miracle." At 2 o'clock.

THE FIRST MIRACLE ON ICE

Before the U.S. Olympic hockey team came out of nowhere to win gold in 1980, there was the 1960 U.S. team. Dick Meredith was one of the players. They were not expected to even medal at the games, but the team went undefeated, and captured the gold. Dick talks with Dick Gordon about what it was like to play that unforgettable series of games in Squaw Valley, Calif. fifty years ago.

Washington Post gushes about Demong's Nordic combined team

Read the love here.

BREAKING: SILVER MEDAL FOR DEMONG

In one of the most exciting finishes of the Vancouver Olympics, Bill Demong and his American Nordic combined team claimed a silver medal.

That brings the medal count for the North Country to 2 -- one medal behind Japan!

Wahoo!

Check it out: Weibrecht's Sports Illustrated Cover

Lake Placid is planning a parade for Andrew Weibrecht. Hopefully, Saranac Lake can do the same for Bill Demong! This from ORDA:

Congratulations Lake Placid’s Andrew Weibrecht, who won Olympic bronze in Friday’s, Feb 19, men’s Super-G, in Vancouver, Canada. This Friday, Feb. 26, Lake Placid will honor Andrew with a parade, beginning at 4 p.m., through the village’s Main St., beginning at the Municipal Parking Lot and finishing at the Cottage Café, where the community can come together and congratulate Andrew.

Bill Demong's Nordic combined team positioned for medal in Vancouver

Pictured: Bill Demong with his mom Helen (Photo provided)


The first round of team 4-by-5km Nordic combined racing is done for the day and the United States -- led by Vermontville's Bill Demong -- is in second place.

That's remarkable because the first portion was the jumping competition, and the US's big strength is in skiing.

Now the US will start just two seconds behind Finland, in a competition that combines ski jumping and cross-country racing. Here's the latest from the Seattle Times.

The U.S. men's nordic combined team is poised to make history at Whistler Olympic Park, after finishing a close second behind Finland in the jumping portion of the team nordic combined.

The U.S. team of Bill Demong, Johnny Spillane, Todd Lodwick and Brett Camerota will have only a 2-second deficit behind leader Finland in the staggered start for the 5K cross country relay, which begins at 2 p.m.

The Americans are strong skiers. Their jump performance this morning puts them in strong medal position.

A medal in the team event would be the first in history for America, which signaled its ascension in the sport by winning four medals at last year's world championships in the Czech Republic.

The contest resumes this afternoon (2pm Vancouver time; 5pm Eastern) and we'll have final results for you later on the In Box.

Weibrecht to apear on cover of Sports Illustrated

Our Vancouver correspondent, Nancie Battaglia, reports that Sports Illustrated will feature the downhill skiing stars of the Vancouver Olympics.

Andrew Weibrecht and his teammates Bode Miller, Lindsay Vonn and Julia Mancuso will be the cover photo of Sports Illustrated---posed with their medals...

To view SI's coverage of the Winter Olympics, go here.

Andrew Weibrecht talks about his bronze medal win

The good stuff starts about six minutes in.

Lake Placid's Napier in 11th; Saranac Lake's Frenette 32nd

John Napier has another day of heats today to improve his standing, though a comeback to reach the podium is a long shot. Here's a statement released last night by the Bobsled Federation.

John Napier (Lake Placid, N.Y.) teamed with Steve Langton (Melrose, Mass.) as USA II to wrap up the first day of competition in 11th with a combined time of 1:44.73.

Team USA II powered off the block with identical start times of 4.89 seconds for runs of 52.28 and 52.45 seconds.

“I got a little nervous and made a few mistakes, but hopefully tomorrow I can make improvements,” said Napier. “There’s absolutely no way to prepare for the Olympic Games. There’s no way to explain it, to describe it. This is a kid’s dream and there’s no words I can use to describe it.”

Meanwhile, Saranac Lake's Peter Frenette finished the ski jumping competition in 32nd place.

Here's a clip from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune:

He had to wax his own skis and rip apart a few seams from his ski suit — the same ski suit he personally sewed a few weeks ago while training in Park City, Utah.

Such is life for cash-strapped U.S. ski jumpers, who are not funded by the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association.

"We're the first athletes here every morning because we have to wax our own skis," said Frenette, who turns 18 Wednesday. "Everyone else has people that do everything for them. It'd be a lot easier to focus on just our jumping than, 'I've got to go there and wax my skis and make sure my suit's legal and do all this stuff.'"

Frenette, considered the future of U.S. ski jumping, barely missed the cutoff to advance to the finals in the large hill ski jumping event Saturday. He finished 32nd out of 50 jumpers with a score of 90.6 after soaring 114 1/2 meters at a top speed of 92.2 kilometers per hour.

"Definitely regrets," Frenette said. "There's so many little things. You're like, 'OK, if I could have done that, I could have gone a couple meters farther.' It's kind of hard being that close because you know you can be in with the top-30."

UPDATE: Lake Placid's Weibrecht wins bronze - first North Country medal

Andrew Weibrecht skied a monster run in the Super G today in Vancouver. He led the pack until being edged by teammate Bode Miller.

Both Americans were pushed aside by Norway's Aksel Svindal.


It's an amazing accomplishment for the 24-year-old Weibrecht, and hopefully will signal a strong weekend for the North Country's athletes.

Who has the best Olympic medal count per capita? (Vancouver trivia break)

Yes, the US is leading the pack in total medals so far, with 17.

But we've only won one Olympic medal for every 17.8 million people in America.

Norway, meanwhile, has won a medal for every .5 million people.

Yup, by this calculus they're doing 35 times better than we are...

Put another way, if we were matching the Norwegians' per capita medal output, we'd have won 595 medals so far.

Which would be AMAZING, given that only around 100 medals have been handed out so far.

On our global news program The World last night, someone pointed out grudgingly that the Norwegians only have fish and winter sports.

But I think the person who said that was from Sweden...

Must-hear Olympic radio tomorrow morning on NCPR

You think you've heard just about every Olympic story imaginable already? Not quite.

It turns out that back in 2008 when the StoryCorps booth was here in Saranac Lake, Olympians Tim Burke and Lowell Bailey sat down to talk with one of their former coaches, Saranac Lake architect Kris Seymour.

Their conversation about sport, life, and the pursuit of the Olympic dream is amazing.

Seymour asks probing, intelligent, intimate questions.

Bailey and Burke talk in complex ways about what it means to be hugely famous pro athletes in Europe and almost unknown here in the U.S.

They also tell the story of growing up in this North Country culture, where winter sport is an essential part of life.

Join us for a special Olympic-edition StoryCorps tomorrow morning during the 8 O'clock Hour.

Are the Vancouver Olympics a disaster?

Tracee Hamilton at the Washington Post is running a column this morning blasting the Vancouver games as sort of a Potemkin village of technical snafus, lousy weather, ticket cancellations and safety woes.

After just four days of competition, the Vancouver Games are veering off course like a skier who caught an edge.

Read her full article here.

Tough day for Burke, Bailey in Vancouver biathlon

It was a tough day yesterday for North Country biathlon skiers competing in Vancouver.

Lake Placid’s Lowell Bailey finished 36th in the twelve-and-a-half kilometer “pursuit” competition. Tim Burke from Paul Smiths finished in 47th place.

Both men will have at least two more chances to reach the podium in the sport, which combines rifle shooting with endurance cross-country skiing.

Burke told the AFP news service that he expects to fare better in the "mass start" competition on February 21st.

"Today was just a training day for me. I had nothing really going on, no expectations.

"I've been on the podium in the past and so I'm sure I'll take the podium for the (15 km) mass start race," said the 28-year-old New Yorker, who earlier this season became the first American to hit the overall World Cup biathon points leaderboard.

Tomorrow during the 8 O’clock Hour, we’ll have a special Winter Olympics edition of StoryCorps.

Bailey and Burke will talk with Kris Seymour, from Saranac Lake, one of their early coaches, about what it was like to grow up competing in the Adirondacks.

Lake Placid's Horst Weber with VP Biden

ORDA sent around this photo today of Lake Placid resident Horst Weber in Whistler snagging a photo-op with Vice President Joe Biden.

In Vancouver, Saranac Lake's John Morgan reflects on brother Jimmy's fatal sled accident

These Vancouver Winter Olympics began with the harrowing accident that claimed Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili .

Yesterday, the New York Times caught up with Saranac Lake's John Morgan, who does sliding commentary for NBC.

Morgan reflected on his experience in 1981, watching his brother Jimmy's fatal crash at the bobsled championship in Italy.

Morgan said that when he got to his brother’s sled, it was on its side. A Russian doctor was attending to Jimmy Morgan. Jeff Jost, one of Jimmy Morgan’s teammates, looked at John Morgan, his eyes glazed. Blood was all over, although Jost and the other two sledders were not seriously injured.

“I reached over to check Jimmy’s pulse, and there was none,” Morgan said. “There’s a picture of me leaning over and holding his wrist.”

The videotape, Jastrow said, showed Jimmy Morgan appearing to hit the wall with his neck. Morgan said his brother slammed into the exposed, protruding wood. “He caught his neck on wood from the chute that keeps you in the track,” he said.

After riding with his brother in an ambulance to a hospital, where Jimmy Morgan was declared dead, Morgan called home to Saranac Lake, N.Y., to begin funeral arrangements.

Three decades later, John Morgan -- himself a former champion bobsledder -- is still at the center of sled sports, here in the North Country and around the world.

For more about Saranac Lake's remarkable bobsled history, including more great photos like the one at the top of this post, go to the Bunksplace website here.

Will this be remembered as the Rain Olympics?

At least three North Country athletes -- Tim Burke, Lowell Bailey and Bill Demong -- have seen their fortunes in Vancouver seriously affected by weather.

Radically different conditions on the biathlon course probably made it impossible for Bailey and Burke to medal over the weekend.

They battled slush and rain and snow in the ski-and-shooting competition.

Demong also faced deteriorating conditions on the ski jump, which means he was forced to start far behind in the Nordic combined x-country race.

Top-tier athletes loathe making excuses when they don't win.

But as sour weather continues to sweep the Pacific Northwest, these games could be defined as much by the thermometer as the passion and skill of the competitors.

Americans have breakthrough day in Nordic combined; Demong 6th

Americans came within a whisker of capturing a gold medal today in the Nordic combined, with Johnny Spillane and Todd Lodwick looking particularly strong.

Bill Demong from Vermontville struggled on his jump, but still finished sixth, giving Americans three of the top six finishing spots.

With more Nordic combined events to follow, this is a respectable start. Check out details here from the Washington Post.

Tough Saturday for North Country athletes in Vancouver

Saranac Lake's Peter Frenette failed to advance in the normal hill ski jumping competition, finishing in 41st place, according to the Albany Times-Union.

Frenette, a 17-year-old high school senior, tied teammate Nick Alexander with 106.5 points. Only the top 30 in the first round advanced to the final.

According to the T-U, Trevor Marsicano from Ballston Spa, a speed-skater, who trains in Lake Placid, also finished outside the top 10 in the 5,000 meter event yesterday.

Marsicano, skating in the second pairing, finished 14th in 6:30.93, 10 seconds slower than his bronze-medal winning skate at the Oval in last year's world championships.

For the latest medal tallies, go here.

Enterprise's Lou Reuter on getting fleeced in Vancouver

Lou Reuter and Peter Crowley from the Adirondack Daily Enterprise have arrived in Vancouver.

We'll be checking in with Peter -- along with our correspondent Nancie Battaglia -- as the Olympics ramp up.

Meanwhile, Lou is reporting on the way that small news organizations like the Enterprise are getting fleeced by the corporation running the Games telecom system.

Luger dies in Olympic training at Vancouver

Sometimes it's easy to forget just how high the stakes are in some of these Olympic sports. From the NY Times:

A luge athlete from Georgia, Nodar Kumaritashvili, was killed in a crash in training on the Olympic track at the Whistler Sliding Center on Friday, an Olympic luge official at the track confirmed, the worst-case scenario developing on a track that many competitors have said is too fast.

According to the Times, Kumaritashvili was traveling at nearly 90 mph when he ejected from the track and hit a steel pole.

How do you drive a luge sled?

The New York Times has an awesome video, which explains the technology and the technique of a two-man luge sled.

As we prep for Vancouver 2010, here's your homework for the day!

Will this be Lake Placid's Olympics?

We've tallied roughly a dozen North Country athletes heading to Vancouver for the 2010 Winter Olympics.

Nancie Battaglia, the celebrated photographer will be our eyes and ears on the ground out there -- and this week we'll be setting the mood with a series of profiles and previews.

Here's my fantasy:

On this 30th anniversary of the last Lake Placid Winter Games, it would be cool if our tiny part of the United States accounted for a big chunk of America's medal tally.

Is it unlikely that a half-dozen of our kids and neighbors will make it to the podium in Vancouver? Maybe.

But miracles happen up here all the time.

When I was interviewing Leo Demong about his son Bill's astonishing run as a Nordic combined skier, he reflected on the fact that Bill, Lowell Bailey and Tim Burke all came out of the same NYSEF class.

All three are now in the Olympics. As Leo put it, that's like three kids from the same little league team going to the Majors.

So maybe we're too small to have our own full-blown Olympics back in Lake Placid. But I'm hoping we own a big piece of the 2010 games before they're over.

Tune in tomorrow morning for Melissa Block's story from Lake Placid, which first aired last week on All Things Considered.

The Olympics, women's ski jumping, sexism and hypocrisy

For years, the International Olympic Committee has banned women from long-distance jumping in the Olympic games.

In 2005, IOC member and head of the International Ski Federation, Gian-Franco Kaspar, told me point blank during an interview that it's just not safe for women's bodies:

"Don't forget, it's like jumping down from, let's say, about two meters on the ground about a thousand times a year, which seems not to be appropriate for ladies from a medical point of view."

That seems a little fusty, even for old world European athletic officials.

But the rank hypocrisy of the IOC's stance was illuminated when Olympic organizers allowed the new sport of "ski cross" into the Vancouver games.

Ski cross has been described as a crash-up derby on skies, with multiple athletes crashing and careening down the same moguls course. Hear ATC host Melissa Block's story here.

Just last weekend, a male skier from France was paralyzed from the waist down during a ski cross competition in Lake Placid.

Yet women skiers will be duking it out on the ski-cross course in Vancouver.

So why are "the ladies" allowed to ski cross, but not ski jump?

In an interview with ESPN, Bill Marolt, head of the US Ski and Snowboard Association put it this way:

"It's the IOC looking for opportunities to make the Olympics more relevant to a younger demographic, and they see that in skicross."

Nice. When money and marketing are on the line, women's bodies and their lives are fair game.

But for women ski jumpers -- some of them so accomplished that they can compete on par with the men -- it's another year on the sidelines.

Last year, the British Columbia Supreme Court ruled that failing to allow women jumpers to compete in Vancouver is discrimination.

But the justices also ruled that the Canadian courts were powerless to intervene.

I can't help but think that this unfairness is the first (hopefully the only) serious black mark on these Games.

One thing is clear. Before 2014, someone needs to sort out this nonsense.

And the women whose careers in sport have been cheated deserve a formal apology from the IOC.

Melissa Block's first Lake Placid story: skicross "carnage" at Whiteface

The All Things Considered host is in Lake Placid this week, previewing the Vancouver Olympics. Her first story aired last night on ATC, describing the skicross competition.

Sounds brutal and riveting.

If you missed it, Melissa's story will re-air next week as part of our big Vancouver warm-up week on NCPR.

Getting excited about Vancouver

I've been looking at old Olympic highlight reels from Nagano, Salt Lake City and Torino.

Pretty awesome. A lot of familiar faces from the North Country will be back this winter, but I found myself shedding backyard fever.

Didn't matter where the athletes hailed from.

It was the awesome power of the jumps, the raw power of the mogul skiers, the incredible risk-taking that made me catch my breath, even on old, grainy VCR recordings.

We live in a world where the media culture is largely summer-oriented.

This is a time when snow and ice are celebrated as more than the stuff you scrape off your car.

A time when California and Florida are nudged aside briefly by the North Latitudes.

NCPR's coverage will kick off in a big way next week with a five-day series of pre-Vancouver specials.

We'll also have celebrated sports photographer Nancie Battaglia reporting for us on the ground there.

And we'll be checking in with other journalists including Peter Crowley from the Adirondack Daily Enterprise.

It's going to be fun and exciting -- global as well as down-home.

We'll also be blogging regularly about the competition here on the In Box, so be ready to join in with your handicapping and your reactions.

Lake Placid on NPR's Olympics radar

Next week, National Public Radio will air stories from Lake Placid reported by Melissa Block, co-host of All Things Considered.

Her stories will look forward toward the Vancouver Winter Games just a few weeks away, and look back at the history of our Olympic Village.

With nearly a dozen local and regional athletes expected to compete, it's fun to see the Adirondacks holding their own in the mythology of the Olympics.

Tune in for my interview with Melissa on Monday morning during the 8 O'clock Hour, followed by her All Things Considered reports Monday afternoon.

Saranac Lake's Frenette confirmed to Olympic ski jumping team

Here's the announcement issued this afternoon that 19-year-old Peter Frenette will go to Vancouver, jumping for the US:

A Lake Placid native, Frenette jumps out of the New York Ski Educational Foundation. He has been a regular on the Continental Cup with three point-scoring finishes this season highlighted by a top-20 on the final weekend of selection in Sapporo, Japan. Johnson, who made the 2006 Olympic Team at the age of 16, suffered a knee injury in July but has made a comeback, breaking into the points twice in the Sapporo Continental Cup.

PS: In the press release, ski team officials are identifying Frenette as a Lake Placid guy, a nod to the Olympic village's international fame.

Lake Placid's Napier going to Vancouver Olympics

The US Bobsled and Skeleton federation announced its Vancouver line-up today.

John Napier, a young and fast-rising sledder from LP will captain the second of three four-man squads.

He'll also pilot a 2-man sled.

Napier is one of roughly 9-10 North Country athletes expected to compete in Vancouver and, based on his recent performance, could be one of the likelier candidates to reach a podium.