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Dan Jansen wins gold in his final event, setting a world record in the 1,000 meters.
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Tonya and Nancy. For better or worst, the 1994 Games probably will be best remembered for the attack that U.S. figure skater Tonya Harding engineered on Nancy Kerrigan, her primary rival, before the U.S. nationals and just 50 days before she was to skate in Lillehamer. Cohorts of Harding's were arrested and charged in a plot to remove Kerrigan from the competition. The plan failed and Kerrigan did compete, finishing with the silver medal behind Oksana Baiul, a tiny, doll-like Ukrainian teenager. For her part, Harding sued to get into the Games, and ended up in eighth place.Highlights
 Even as happy endings go, speedskater Dan Jansen's 1994 Olympic experience was just about perfect: a sweet kid from the heartland who did everything the right and honorable way, absorbed numbing setbacks stretching back years and still triumphed at long last, finally winning gold in his final event, with a world record in the 1,000 meters. "I wanted to cry," said Jansen, who then took a heart-wrenching victory lap with his infant daughter, Jane. Fellow speedskater Bonnie Blair confirmed her place as one of the nation's finest female Olympians with a no-frills march to glory in her
last Olympic appearance, the 1,000 meters, winning the
fifth gold and sixth Olympic medal of a 10-year career.
Earlier in the Games, she won the 500 meters. Still another speedskater, Norway's Johann Olav Koss, set three world records and won
three golds in the men's 1,500-, 5,000- and 10,000-meter speed skating events. Skier Tommy Moe got things started well
for the Americans on opening day, winning the first U.S.
men's downhill gold in a decade with
an errorless run down the icy pitch
at Kvitfjell. Moe's offbeat teammate,
Picabo Street, won the silver in
women's downhill. Diann Roffe-Steinrotter, a
diminutive 26-year-old from
Potsdam, N.Y., was a surprise
winner in the super giant slalom, in
part because the favorites crashed
on the Kvitfjell slopes. She was the
first American woman to win gold
in an Alpine event in 10 years. The gold-medal game in men's hockey left most who saw it gasping for adjectives.
Sweden and Canada played through 60 minutes of regulation and 10
minutes of overtime until Peter Forsberg, in the seventh round of a
shoot-out, slid an agonizingly slow backhand shot along the ice and just
under Corey Hirsch's glove for a goal. When Paul Kariya couldn't answer
— his shot was slapped out of the air by Swedish goalie Tommy Salo —
Sweden had won its first Olympic hockey gold, 3-2.
These Games were held only two years after Albertville because the IOC
decided to separate the Summer and Winter Olympics.
| Attendance | Male Athletes | Female Athletes | Most-Medaled | U.S. Rank | | 67 nations | 1,217 | 522 | Norway (26) | Fifth (13) |
Source: Knight-Ridder/Tribune, The Washington Post
© Copyright 2002 washingtonpost.com
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