Lincicome: Not meaning to be rude, but I'm not up to speed on this, dude

Published February 14, 2006 at midnight

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TURIN, Italy - Keep shreddin', dudes.

I am happy to report that the ol' US of A is doing just swell in the dude sports, getting another gold and silver Monday in the halfpipe, whatever that is.

There is more to come, something called SBX, which has "speed, crashes, drama, everything," according to our own dudette, Lindsey Jacobellis.

Can't wait.

You see, otherwise, we're doing alibis. Our stars are falling, or failing, or leaving, and when I think I have just made a blank reference to Apolo Anton Ohno as a star, I

realize I have been sucked into the great Winter Games hype machine.

It gets worse because I have heard with my own ears a creature named Shaun White referred to as "a Winter Olympic icon." I hope Eric Heiden wasn't anywhere nearby.

This has to be about medals because otherwise these Games should come with instructions. Some assembly required. We understand medals. Gold, good. Silver, OK. Bronze, fine. Lists are kept about all of this.

Predictions for Team USA fell somewhere around 30, maybe as many as in Salt Lake City, which was 34. The U.S. had never won more than 13 before Salt Lake.

The alpine ski team boasted itself as the best in the world. Optimism could be found in the most obscure of sports, and, let's face it, when ice hockey is the most unobscure sport, we're reading the small print here.

Never mind that one of our downhillers snapped that it is not about medals, that Bode Miller skis to some interior judge, that all those soft drink and credit card companies that seem to be the chief bankers of this team will not be signing new checks for anyone who finishes 18th. Of course it is about medals.

Starting out, we have run into Norway, as usual, and Russia, of course, and even France, places that know our winter athletes better than we do, playing the old games better than us.

Let Scandinavia have those tediously long treks off into the wilderness on skinny skis, reemerging hours later, faces frozen. The alpine countries can go from the top of the hill to the bottom without music or cheerleaders. Canada can have hockey back and even China can keep its new and urgent attention to figure skating, but when it comes to turning upside down on a flat board, that's us all over and over and over.

"There are normal people (in the sport) and crazy people," explained Danny Kass, who won a silver medal in the halfpipe. "It's like chasing the storm. That's what's cool."

Yeah, cool. Not cold, like ice. That's an old fogy notion. Cool, like . . . well, cool.

The dude sports are still ours, even if we are all in the same cellar when it comes to identifying little people in baggy clothes doing things their mothers warned them never to do.

Dutch paparazzi might follow speedskater Chad Hedrick from place to place and Austrian audiences might yodel across the Alps, "Bod-ee, Bod-ee," loudly enough to pierce Miller's iPod, but when news wafts down the mountain that somebody called the Flying Tomato has won a gold medal, we know he just has to be one of our dudes.

(Actually, there is a German luger named Georg Hackl who is called the Speeding Sausage, so nothing is for sure.) Deferring to the coach of the Flying Tomato, I take his description of snowboard stunting as gospel.

"He rides the pipe like a vert ramp," said Bud Keene, and wise witnesses nod in agreement.

This would be the aforementioned White, riding that pipe, or half of it at least, winning gold in a game nobody with actual credit plays. He is the Flying Tomato because he has long red hair, and why Hackl is the Speeding Sausage I will not ask.

"I'm feeling all Olympicky," White said, accepting his gold medal.

A day later, four - count 'em, four - American ladies had a chance to take the pipe (I do not pretend to know the lingo, so when a backside 9 or a crippler 540 is awed over, I will just be happy that these folks have their own little space on the mountain and are nowhere near mine), and two of them hugged happily as American flags waved, bare-chested young men cheered them with painted initials, U, S and A, thoughtfully aligned in the right order.

Hannah Teter, of Vermont, and Gretchen Blei- ler, of Aspen, went 1-2 with Kelly Clark, of Vermont, barely out of third.

"The Olympics and medaling have been a dream of mine since I was a little girl," said Blei- ler. That would have been, what, last month?

"In 2002, the men swept the podium for the U.S., and that's the day snowboarding became a sport," Bleiler said. "I went to get my hair done a week after, and there were ladies who were 60 in the salon who knew what it was. It was amazing."

Imagine that. Paying attention to someone who is 60.

lincicomeb@RockyMountainNews.com

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