Second Wind

By Pico Iyer/Nagano

The Olympics, to invoke a perhaps too-available and all-encompassing analogy, are much like the Titanic, both the movie and the ship. In other words, it's a grand, old-fashioned blockbuster that stirs you in some primal, half-forgotten place, however vigilant your defenses, throwing up simple human images of panic and delight and loss; and a huge, showy, zillion-dollar model of the family of man that, for all its state-of-the-art grandeur and planning, cannot outswerve a block of ice. It shouldn't work, but it does; things should work, but they don't. As the surprise U.S. silver medalist in the doubles luge, Chris Thorpe, said of his surprise bronze-medalist teammates, "They don't have great lines, they don't have great form. They just fly."

If medals were awarded for staging an Olympics, Nagano would doubtless receive a silver, the color of its snowfall; almost everything Japanese was delicate and accommodating except the weather, which turned skiers on their heads when it wasn't doing the same to schedules. In the end, however, true grit prevailed: the fastest man on skis, Hermann Maier ("Other Name: Das Monster," his official bio explains), confirmed his extraterrestrial status by getting up from a horrific crash and picking up two golds in four days; his female counterpart, Katja Seizinger, returned to form by winning two golds in two days. Even little Denmark claimed its first Winter medal ever, in curling--quite a feat for a nation that doesn't have a functioning curling rink. For Japan, the Games were a happy windfall, as the host nation rode on the cheers of its faithful fans to win more golds in 16 days than it had won in 70 years of Winter Games. Ski jumper Kazuyoshi Funaki assured himself of heartthrob status by flying away with three medals; more movingly, Masahiko Harada, who had let glory slip away in his final jump in two consecutive Olympics, somehow pulled off the longest jumps in Olympic history in two consecutive events to claim redemption. Roar after roar ran through the crowd, larger than in all the other arenas combined, and the grand swelling of emotion in a people not usually demonstrative touched even foreign hearts.

Americans were presumably less happy with the proceedings. The millionaire-filled hockey "Dream Team" won just one of its four games, and, pining perhaps for the days of being an amateur underdog, trashed parts of the Olympic Village before departing. A sparkly Tara Lipinski ("Occupation: pupil") and an obviously disappointed Michelle Kwan ("Hobby: corresponding with pen pals") claimed gold and silver, but Nicole Bobek, who'd hoped to join them on the medal stand, ended up a disappointing 17th. It generally fell to women to lift America's spirits: Nikki Stone, told she could never ski again after a back injury two years ago, claiming a gold in freestyle aerials; or Chris Witty, daughter of Walter Witty (just one letter from a daydream), winning a bronze and a silver in speed skating.

Perhaps the most rousing moment came when the U.S. women's hockey team beat four-time world champion Canada, 3-1, to take an emotional gold. The two games between the fierce enemies introduced fans to a style of fluency and electrifying intensity that put many an NHL game to shame, as well as to such new words as "underwomanned." Though body checking is not allowed in women's hockey, it would have been hard to tell that to any of the bodies flying across the ice, while Maple Leafs clashed with Stars and Stripes all around the packed arena.

"We have an intense dislike and an intense rivalry," said Canadian coach Shannon Miller after seeing 20 penalties in a preliminary game, on Valentine's Day, that officially meant nothing. But when the American women beat her team for the second time in three days, Miller looked up and "had a feeling of joy going through my body. Because what I realized was an Olympic gold medal was being hung around the neck of a female hockey player."

All the new sports, in fact, left their mark: snowboarders treated the Olympics as if they were a halfpipe, as expected, and curling captivated so many television viewers across the world with its stately version of Go-on-ice that in Sweden viewers protested when a local channel switched to figure skating.

Sometimes the Nagano Games could seem less dynamic than aerodynamic as competitors muttered about clap skates and luge "booties" and strips on speed skaters' uniforms that helped them fly. But all the machinery in the world couldn't erase the piercing human moments: Harada, with his back against the temporary wall of a cafeteria, after his failure to win gold in the normal hill jump, a copy of the results sheet in a glove that said JAPAN; or Cammi Granato, the captain of the U.S. women's hockey team, after a black-lacquer disk with gold dust was hung around her neck, simply holding her face in her hands, overwhelmed.

Before the Games, an organizer rallied his troops by reminding them, "We should regard even a slice of meat and a piece of tomato as representative of Japan." In fact, though, the Winter Games opened out into a new postnational order in which an athlete named Kyoko skated for the U.S. and a Dusty tended goal for Japan (while Sweden's Ulf Samuelsson was forced off the team when it was found he carried a U.S. passport too and so was no longer technically Swedish). Dutchmen turned the M-Wave speed-skating arena into a province of Holland with their jolly, orange-clad fans--the Brazilians of winter--and their nine medals (out of 15). Gianni Romme, after winning the first of his two world-record golds, said there was nothing special about his country's program: "We are Dutch, but we could be Norwegian or German."

Next to him, Bart Veldkamp, who'd managed to break the Dutch monopoly only by switching nationality to become the Belgian team, said, "I was born in Holland, I skate for Belgium. But if you are looking at the moon and ask, 'Where do you come from?' I come from Earth."

Good words for the Titanic as it sails toward another continent.