Detroit Free Press

REPORTER: "Why did you arrive by helicopter?"TOMBA: "Because everyone else drove."VAL D'ISERE, France -- When we ...

MERIBEL, France -- I am looking for an enemy.I am taking applications. I am knocking on doors. I am walking ...

LA PLAGNE, France -- I rarely go to bobsled races, because I can see the same thing at a bank robbery. Two guys in masks come running out, jump in a vehicle, duck and drive away. Big deal.But I did attend the Olympic bobsled race Sunday, because certain circumstances demanded it, such as national interest, and the fact that if I didn't go to bobsled, I had to go to figure skating, in which the ice dancerswere scheduled to do The Original Mandatory Program, which this year is . . . the polka! I am not making this up. Roll out . . . the barrel!Also, Herschel Walker.

MERIBEL, France -- There I was, going down the mountain, when I bumped into the entire Indian Olympic team.Both of them."Where's the rest?" I asked the two skiers."Hello, yes," they said."No, no. The rest of your team. What happened? Miss plane? Bus go off cliff?""Hello, yes," they said.

ALBERTVILLE, France -- Leave the kid alone. That's what we should do. Let Dan Jansen skate around that ice track ...

MERIBEL, France -- Sometimes your moment comes right on schedule, when you are young and ambitious, ready to snap it off with your teeth. And sometimes, you wait for that moment a long and winding time. The big leagues never call. Your life stops in truck driver towns. You begin to wonder, as you pass another birthday looking out the window of a bus, whether perhaps you are meant to be no more than this, some sort of lyric in a bad country song.

ALBERTVILLE, France -- Before I explain why Christopher Bowman is about as real as an Easter egg -- and nearly as fragile -- let me confess something to you, Michelle:I'm a man.And being a man, I will never appreciate figure skating the way women do. Sorry. It's in the genes. Like hair loss. We're just different.WHAT WOMEN WISH: That for one magic moment, they could be like those figure skaters, gliding over the ice as the crowd calls their names.WHAT MEN WISH: That there was a sequel to "Animal House."

ALBERTVILLE, France -- Let's put the Olympics on hold for today and talk about the Mike Tyson rape conviction, because even over here, on a snowcapped French mountain, some things are pretty obvious: