Olympic Sports

A dastardly criminal is terrorizing the Alps.

He is sick. He is dirty.

In fact, he’s got to be filthy.

The demented creep is stealing toilet seats.

He has struck from Sestriere to San Sicario. He has even ventured to Monginevro, France.

Somebody better call Interpol.

I’ll spare you the messy details, but using these seatless toilets requires a degree of agility and athleticism that figure skaters can only dream of.

The next two days I’ll keep an eye out for the thief while I’m covering the men’s four-man bobsled at Cesana Pariol. If you have any ideas on how I can flush him out, let me know.

Congratulations to Julia Mancuso for winning the gold medal in the giant slalom Friday, the first medal in these Olympics for the American women’s ski team. She also became the first American woman to win an Olympic gold in the giant slalom since Debbie Armstrong in Sarajevo in 1984.

I talked to Mancuso by phone here before she competed, and spoke to her after covering two of her earlier races. Based on three short conversations, I certainly can’t claim that I really know her. But the 21-year-old does seem to have a playful, rebellious streak.

She stayed in a rented RV instead of the Athletes Village. She wore a tiara on her head during a slalom run of the combined event. She angered some American journalists when she skipped through the mixed zone without talking after that race. Mancuso tried the same stunt after the Super G, but bumped into her boyfriend, American skier Steven Nyman, giving an Olympic official enough time to catch her and make her come back through the mixed zone.

Just outside the Norway House restaurant in Cesana Torinese, Italy, is a road sign that says Francia 7.

I’d never been to France, so I couldn’t pass up this opportunity. Seven kilometers is only 4.3 miles. I could handle that, even if it was all uphill.

Fortified by a sugar donut and succo arancio (orange juice), I embarked on my journey up into the French Alps this morning.

It wasn’t that taxing. I caught a bus.

My Olympic credential got me on the spectator’s DOM-43 bus which runs from Cesana Torinese to Monginevro, France every 30 minutes.

I knew I had gotten on the proper bus when I saw a sign on the left side of the road that said Francia. A sign on the right said France.

The last two nights I actually found something watchable on Italian TV - UEFA Champions League football or soccer.

Normally watching soccer excites me as much as updating my virus protection software. But there’s something different about watching European soccer in Europe.

The passion of the fans and players burns through the TV set. The games were at night, and it was definitely cold, but no one cared a bit. The fans are all bundled up and the coaches are in full-length winter coats and hats. But the players were in jerseys and shorts.

The first night I caught the tail end of the match between London’s Arsenal and Real Madrid, which boasts the highly publicized and highly paid David Beckham. I didn’t see his wife, Posh Spice, anywhere, but Beckham was hard to miss with his long, golden locks. True to form, he bent one free kick brilliantly around several defenders, but his teammate blew the shot.

I had a little time to kill before the women’s slalom began Wednesday afternoon, so I went on a little stroll around the Sestriere ski resort.

Here are a few of the highlights of my 10-minute stroll:

A smiling grandpa carrying a set of tousle-haired twins, one in each arm.

A patio full of fans sipping on libations while soaking in the bright sunshine.

Men in ski jackets proudly hailing from New Zealand, Greece, Norway, Canada, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, the United States and, of course, Italy.

An Olympic volunteer playing a bugle, inspiring passersby to pull out their horns and honk away.

We received a reporter’s notebook from the friendly folks at McDonald’s in our media kit. It included some Italian-English translations for some helpful expressions here.

Thank you — Grazie
What time is it? — Che ore sono?
Where are you from? — Di dove sei?

And the all-important — Where is the nearest McDonald’s? — Dove e il McDonald’s piu vicino?

It also said that ciao means hello. That one confused me.

Whenever Italians greet each other in the morning, they say buongiorno. In the afternoon it’s buona sera. Whenever they answer the phone, it’s pronto. But it’s never ciao.

So I go to the men’s 1500-meter speedskating event Tuesday, hoping to see my first American gold medal here.

I figure we have a very good chance, since the American skaters are 500-meter gold medalist Joey Cheek, 1,000-meter gold medalist Shani Davis, 1,500-meter world record holder Chad Hedrick, and the 1,500-meter gold medalist at the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics, Derek Parra.

Curses, foiled again!

Davis won the silver. Hedrick won the bronze. Cheek finished 9th, and Parra finished 19th.

Italy’s Enrico Fabris was the surprise gold medalist.

So I still haven’t seen an American gold medal. But I’ve seen Italy’s only two individual gold medals: Fabris and luger Armin Zoeggeler.

Did you ever wonder what happened race car driver Mario Andretti?

I think I saw him Tuesday. He drove me to Turin.

I was supposed to catch a bus from the mountains to Turin, but it was delayed for some reason. So a kindly Olympic volunteer said she would get a car and driver for me and two other journalists.

An older man soon pulled up in a nondescript sedan. He didn’t look like Andretti, but he sure drove like him.

Zipping down from the mountains, he gunned the car up to 150 kilometers per hour. I didn't know how fast that was, but the beautiful snowcapped peaks were a big white blur. I vowed to convert that to miles per hour when I got down to Turin — if I got down to Turin.

There’s been a lot of griping about the performance of the U.S. ski team, which has won only one medal. They brought a lot of criticism on themselves by boasting that they were the best in the world, and they clearly are not — not here anyway.

But some of the criticism seems shortsighted. America’s ski team is one of the best in the world. But we are so obsessed with winning so that’s not good enough.

Many American skiers have finished in the top 10, missing out on medals by a few tenths of a second. If you or I skied their events, we would lose by minutes — if we made it down the course at all.

I scored a personal musical trifecta during the past 12 hours.

Last night I remembered that I had packed my Sopranos CD, so I listened to an assortment of tunes from my favorite TV show. This morning my bus driver was playing the greatest hits of Creedence Clearwater Revival, one of my favorite all-time bands. When I arrived at San Sicario the loudspeakers were blaring “Dream On”? and “Walk This Way”? by Aerosmith, another of my faves.

I seem to be on a roll. What will happen next? Will I find an In-and-Out Burger at San Sicario? Will the Godfather be on TV tonight? Will I finally get to see an American win a gold medal here?