Olympics: The Memory Count

• Share

"So many memories," mused Freddie Powell, the Jamaican bobsledder, "so many friends." As the Olympic Village was emptying and students at the University of Calgary were retaking their campus (and planning a "Tear Down the Fences Party"), the last looks at the XVth Winter Games were long and longing.

Were the walls really coming down, though, or were they going up again?

So many images, so many of them conflicting. America's gold-medal speed skater, Bonnie Blair, 23, was the picture of invulnerability or delicacy, depending on whether she was all packed up in her peppermint suit, streaming across the ice, or her hair was falling down afterward in curls. (It's the color of maple syrup in the morning.) "I'm just a person who likes to chase someone," she said in a voice that sounded too small for a champion of the world, 5 ft. 5 in. tall.

In their skating tug-of-pulchritude, Katarina Witt and Debi Thomas bared their claws and other whatnot. Referring to no one in particular, Witt observed, "I think every man prefers looking at a well-built woman to someone else who is the shape of a rubber ball." Thomas declared, "I think I have a great body." But the silly argument dissolved into stark drama. Thomas stumbled to a stunned third and Witt won.

Alberto Tomba, 21, Italy's self-proclaimed beast and "La Bomba," buried his ski boots in what little snow remained at Nakiska on the day of the giant slalom in the second week of the great chinook. He feared they might soften halfway down the mountain under the weight of his incredible confidence. Immediately posting the best time for the first run, Tomba waited only long enough to see that Pirmin Zurbriggen was slower before telephoning home to Bologna (collect). "You have seen Tomba once," he advised his parents. "But now, for the second run, you must turn on all three TV sets and watch Tomba win three times in parallel."

And yet, when he did win, the Italian zigzagger was overtaken by something close to modesty. "I am not a beast or La Bomba today," he said. "I am just a happy man." Two days later he won a second gold medal and wept.

At the Village entrance, where eight bronze figures (women and men) strain to support the archway, athletes milling in and out of the sunshine wore similar expressions. "We've been babied so much," sighed Ruben Gonzalez, the Argentine luger from Texas, "it's going to be hard to go back to the real world." Swiss Bobsledder Andre Kiser said, "The Canadian people have been so warm. Maybe that's why there's no snow."

An example of a warm Calgarian, a grandmother named Jean Newsted, came scurrying along with a loom in one hand and a nervous-looking rabbit in the other. Just then the Soviet silver-medal ice-dancing team of Sergei Ponomarenko and Marina Klimova materialized by the happiest chance. Hastening up to them, Newsted explained through a handy interpreter that she was a weaver of Angora fur and had been so taken with Ponomarenko and Klimova's performance that two of her rabbits now bore their names. In fact, here in her arms was Benjamin Sergei. It is difficult to describe the Soviet's expression, other than to say Ponomarenko blinked like a rabbit before smiling. "Thank you," he responded formally. "Is great honor."