Detroit Free Press

SALT LAKE CITY -- The flame went out, the night got quiet, and these XIX Winter Olympics, America's first in 22 ...

SALT LAKE CITY -- I will never win an Olympic gold medal. But I did, last week, make an Olympic-sized mistake.I caught a flu. In the middle of these Olympics. OK. It happens. I was sneezing and wheezing and blowing my nose all over the Alpine world.One night I got back to my hotel room early, hoping for a long sleep to knock the bug from my body.I should correct something. I said "hotel room." This would suggest that I was staying in a hotel. In truth, it was a motel. In truth, it was the TraveLodge. And not the world's greatest TraveLodge.

WEST VALLEY CITY, Utah -- It was the Olympic hockey semifinals, and standing behind the U.S. bench, wearing a dark ...

SALT LAKE CITY -- He's the one. The golden child. They all know it."C'MON BODE! . . ."It's the reason you saw a little more grit in their teeth as Bode Miller sliced down the giant slalom Thursday."C'MON, BODE! . . ."You could almost hear their prayer as he neared the finish."PLEEEASE, BODE! . . ."He's the reason the U.S. ski coaches and managers and poobahs all leapt a little higher when his hungry, wolfish style gave them another minor miracle, a silver medal from the back of the pack."YES, BODE, YES!"

SALT LAKE CITY -- The pebble has become an avalanche.Now the Russians want to go home. They're threatening to ...

SALT LAKE CITY -- It is raining down in Birmingham, Ala., and the air is a balmy 69 degrees. Yolanda Cooper, a senior sprinter at the University of Alabama-Birmingham, excitedly picks up the phone. She spent the previous night with her teammates watching her track coach, Vonetta Flowers, become the first black gold medalist in the history of the Winter Olympics. Vonetta, the woman who clocks her lap times? Vonetta, who runs alongside her? That Vonetta? Won the Olympic bobsled?

SALT LAKE CITY -- It is raining down in Birmingham, Ala., and the air is a balmy 69 degrees. Yolanda Cooper, a ...

SALT LAKE CITY -- Blame your parents. If they had named you Apolo when you popped from the womb, then you, too, ...