The IOC’s Coordination Commission for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad – Beijing 2008, led by its Chairman Hein Verbruggen, today concluded its sixth full visit to Beijing since the Chinese capital was awarded the Olympic Games in 2001. The meetings between the Commission and the Organising Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad – Beijing 2008 (BOCOG), which took place over three days, included a venue tour that allowed the Commission members to get a first-hand look at the development of some of the iconic venues that Beijing is building for the Games The members also heard about the legacy that these venues will provide to the local communities, the city of Beijing and China as a whole, once the Olympic competitions are over. The meetings illustrated that BOCOG has now entered an important period in its journey towards the Games in 2008, as it moves from a planning focus to a more operational and client-focused phase in its lifecycle.

Making Plans A Reality
Speaking at the end of the Coordination Commission’s visit, Chairman Verbruggen said, “We are pleased to see that BOCOG is continuing to make good progress and this progress is obvious, as we see the spectacular Olympic venues taking shape. During the meetings over the past few days, BOCOG has demonstrated that it is making a smooth transition from planning for the Games to actually making those plans a reality. At this crucial stage in the Games preparations, the successful integration of all the entities involved in organising the Games here in Beijing is more important than ever.” He continued, “As the Beijing 2008 project comes to fruition, BOCOG will gain a lot by drawing on international expertise, as previous organising committees have done, and we can see that BOCOG has already started this process through its collaboration in fields such as the environment, the Olympic Torch Relay, ticketing, public relations and ceremonies; and with international organisations, such as the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP); and individual experts, such as the international consultants for the ceremonies.”

Progress
The Commission was delighted to see the advances that BOCOG has been making since its last visit in November and following BOCOG’s participation in the IOC’s observer programme during the Torino 2006 Olympic Winter Games, with over 200 participants attending from BOCOG. This progress could be seen in many areas including venue construction, with the spectacular National Stadium taking shape; the environment, BOCOG having received ISO 14001 certification; communications; Olympic education, with 20 Olympic model schools founded; media services; and competition organisation, with 40 test events planned to be held before the Games. During its meetings, the Commission looked in particular detail at the operations and services that BOCOG plans to provide to stakeholder groups like the athletes, the National Olympic Committees, spectators, the International Federations, the media and sponsors.

Dress Rehearsal
Looking forward, Verbruggen commented, “BOCOG will soon start to hold important test events, such as the International Softball Federation’s XI Women’s Fast Pitch World Championship and the International Sailing Regatta in Qingdao, at the Olympic venues, with many more to come in 2007. These competitions should be considered as a dress rehearsal for the Games themselves. During the second half of this year, BOCOG will also meet with representatives of the written press and the rights-holding broadcasters, respectively, at the World Press Briefing in September and the World Broadcasters’ Meeting in August. It is during all these events that BOCOG will be able to fine tune its planning and prepare for smooth operations in order to deliver an exceptional experience to all those who will participate at the Games.”

Coordination Commission
The IOC, as the guardian of the Olympic Games, will continue to assist and monitor the work of the Beijing 2008 project through the work of the Coordination Commission. The next time the full Coordination Commission will be in Beijing will be towards the end of 2006, and the Commission will continue to visit the host city on a twice yearly basis until the Games are held in 2008. The Commission’s full meetings in Beijing are supplemented by the regular visits of smaller IOC teams involving the Commission Chairman, selected members of the Commission and members of the IOC administration.

Beijing 2008
The Games of the XXIX Olympiad – Beijing 2008 will take place from 8 to 24 August 2008. The Games in Beijing will play host to the 28 summer sports currently on the Olympic programme. Approximately 10,500 athletes are expected to participate in the Games with around 20,000 accredited media bringing the Games to the world.

TURIN Beyond the city skyline on a misty autumn day, the mountains lurked invisibly behind the clouds. Turin’s grayest season obscured its lovely backdrop. Instead of snow-capped Alps, people here saw a horizon of construction cranes, the omnipresent markers of an Olympic city busily remaking itself for the Winter Games in February.

Its streets not yet festooned in the official Olympic banners, Turin has reminders that are less colorful and far messier. The building-and-fixing boom extends beyond the Olympic sites - most of which are in the final, deadline-driven stages of preparation - to the new apartment and office buildings and to a restoration of so many road surfaces that the city may consider adding a detour sign to its official seal.

The city is clearly lodged squarely in the “Is this going to be worth it?” stage that grips every Olympic city.

The organizers, of course, say yes. They have invested nearly seven years of work in infusing the city with a gleaming set of facilities they believe will have value beyond the games. Among these is the reinvented Palavela, a sail-shaped structure built in 1961 as an exhibition pavilion for the centenary of Italy’s unification. It houses a figure-skating and short-track speedskating arena.

Olympic leaders seized on the games as a way to rehabilitate not only Turin’s buildings but also its image and self-image, which was dented in the early 1990s when the carmaker Fiat pulled its main production facilities from the city. Turin has restored its historic center, its piazzas and porticoed walkways.

“Before, we were a city made for the production of cars,” said Massimo Pianotti, the manager of the primary hockey arena, Palasport Olimpico. “Now we are a city of events, of sports, of tourism. This is very important. I come from Torino and this is very special.”

Pianotti spoke proudly while standing in front of the arena, a stunning rectangular building. It has aluminum panels with windows that flood the hockey rink with light.

The arena is located next to the Olympic stadium, a Mussolini-era soccer stadium that was abandoned by the city’s teams. It is restored and ready to welcome back Torino, and, perhaps, Juventus from their suburban stadium.

“I think it’s important to bring old, historic sites back to some popularity,” said Alessandro Deleonardis, the Palavela manager. “It will help the people of Turin look differently at what they have.”

The organizers have been pleased with the response of Turin’s citizens, who have filled the seats at most of the test events. They have met expectations for early ticket sales and volunteered for games duties in such overwhelming numbers that the Turin organizing committee had to stop taking names.

But it will be years before the city can judge the value of its labor and financial commitments. The organizing committee has waged a battle with the Italian government, which wants 30 million, or more than $35 million, in budget cuts.

Turin is hoping to avoid the fate of Athens, which is laboring under a debt of 10 billion from the 2004 Summer Games, and Sydney, which has struggled to use its expensive facilities. Turin hopes its judicious rehabbing of old facilities and careful planning of their post-Games use - something Athens did not begin to do until the games ended - will land it in the small circle of satisfied Olympic cities.

Turin’s planners also hope that the facilities will spark Italian success in new sports. With a long tradition in Alpine skiing, Italians have been slower to embrace snowboarding and freestyle skiing. Organizers hope to turn the freestyle facilities at Sauze d’Oulx into a training center for Italians.

Ivo Ferriani, the manager of the bobsled-luge track in Cesana and a luge Olympian in 1988, is excited about Italy’s first track for his sport. The track built in Cortina for the 1956 Winter Games was for bobsledding only.

“I want people to come here and be amazed,” he said. “I want the athletes to have success, but they also must be passionate. This is important in Italy. They must see the emotions.”

As Ferriani spoke, the sun sparkled on the steel covering the track’s turns. There was construction everywhere - the track was about the only thing at the site that was finished, yet in the mountains, it seems, you can see forever.

TURIN Beyond the city skyline on a misty autumn day, the mountains lurked invisibly behind the clouds. Turin’s grayest season obscured its lovely backdrop. Instead of snow-capped Alps, people here saw a horizon of construction cranes, the omnipresent markers of an Olympic city busily remaking itself for the Winter Games in February.

Its streets not yet festooned in the official Olympic banners, Turin has reminders that are less colorful and far messier. The building-and-fixing boom extends beyond the Olympic sites - most of which are in the final, deadline-driven stages of preparation - to the new apartment and office buildings and to a restoration of so many road surfaces that the city may consider adding a detour sign to its official seal.

The city is clearly lodged squarely in the “Is this going to be worth it?” stage that grips every Olympic city.

The organizers, of course, say yes. They have invested nearly seven years of work in infusing the city with a gleaming set of facilities they believe will have value beyond the games. Among these is the reinvented Palavela, a sail-shaped structure built in 1961 as an exhibition pavilion for the centenary of Italy’s unification. It houses a figure-skating and short-track speedskating arena.

Olympic leaders seized on the games as a way to rehabilitate not only Turin’s buildings but also its image and self-image, which was dented in the early 1990s when the carmaker Fiat pulled its main production facilities from the city. Turin has restored its historic center, its piazzas and porticoed walkways.

“Before, we were a city made for the production of cars,” said Massimo Pianotti, the manager of the primary hockey arena, Palasport Olimpico. “Now we are a city of events, of sports, of tourism. This is very important. I come from Torino and this is very special.”

Pianotti spoke proudly while standing in front of the arena, a stunning rectangular building. It has aluminum panels with windows that flood the hockey rink with light.

The arena is located next to the Olympic stadium, a Mussolini-era soccer stadium that was abandoned by the city’s teams. It is restored and ready to welcome back Torino, and, perhaps, Juventus from their suburban stadium.

“I think it’s important to bring old, historic sites back to some popularity,” said Alessandro Deleonardis, the Palavela manager. “It will help the people of Turin look differently at what they have.”

The organizers have been pleased with the response of Turin’s citizens, who have filled the seats at most of the test events. They have met expectations for early ticket sales and volunteered for games duties in such overwhelming numbers that the Turin organizing committee had to stop taking names.

But it will be years before the city can judge the value of its labor and financial commitments. The organizing committee has waged a battle with the Italian government, which wants 30 million, or more than $35 million, in budget cuts.

Turin is hoping to avoid the fate of Athens, which is laboring under a debt of 10 billion from the 2004 Summer Games, and Sydney, which has struggled to use its expensive facilities. Turin hopes its judicious rehabbing of old facilities and careful planning of their post-Games use - something Athens did not begin to do until the games ended - will land it in the small circle of satisfied Olympic cities.

Turin’s planners also hope that the facilities will spark Italian success in new sports. With a long tradition in Alpine skiing, Italians have been slower to embrace snowboarding and freestyle skiing. Organizers hope to turn the freestyle facilities at Sauze d’Oulx into a training center for Italians.

Ivo Ferriani, the manager of the bobsled-luge track in Cesana and a luge Olympian in 1988, is excited about Italy’s first track for his sport. The track built in Cortina for the 1956 Winter Games was for bobsledding only.

“I want people to come here and be amazed,” he said. “I want the athletes to have success, but they also must be passionate. This is important in Italy. They must see the emotions.”

As Ferriani spoke, the sun sparkled on the steel covering the track’s turns. There was construction everywhere - the track was about the only thing at the site that was finished, yet in the mountains, it seems, you can see forever.

TURIN Beyond the city skyline on a misty autumn day, the mountains lurked invisibly behind the clouds. Turin’s grayest season obscured its lovely backdrop. Instead of snow-capped Alps, people here saw a horizon of construction cranes, the omnipresent markers of an Olympic city busily remaking itself for the Winter Games in February.

Its streets not yet festooned in the official Olympic banners, Turin has reminders that are less colorful and far messier. The building-and-fixing boom extends beyond the Olympic sites - most of which are in the final, deadline-driven stages of preparation - to the new apartment and office buildings and to a restoration of so many road surfaces that the city may consider adding a detour sign to its official seal.

The city is clearly lodged squarely in the “Is this going to be worth it?” stage that grips every Olympic city.

The organizers, of course, say yes. They have invested nearly seven years of work in infusing the city with a gleaming set of facilities they believe will have value beyond the games. Among these is the reinvented Palavela, a sail-shaped structure built in 1961 as an exhibition pavilion for the centenary of Italy’s unification. It houses a figure-skating and short-track speedskating arena.

Olympic leaders seized on the games as a way to rehabilitate not only Turin’s buildings but also its image and self-image, which was dented in the early 1990s when the carmaker Fiat pulled its main production facilities from the city. Turin has restored its historic center, its piazzas and porticoed walkways.

“Before, we were a city made for the production of cars,” said Massimo Pianotti, the manager of the primary hockey arena, Palasport Olimpico. “Now we are a city of events, of sports, of tourism. This is very important. I come from Torino and this is very special.”

Pianotti spoke proudly while standing in front of the arena, a stunning rectangular building. It has aluminum panels with windows that flood the hockey rink with light.

The arena is located next to the Olympic stadium, a Mussolini-era soccer stadium that was abandoned by the city’s teams. It is restored and ready to welcome back Torino, and, perhaps, Juventus from their suburban stadium.

“I think it’s important to bring old, historic sites back to some popularity,” said Alessandro Deleonardis, the Palavela manager. “It will help the people of Turin look differently at what they have.”

The organizers have been pleased with the response of Turin’s citizens, who have filled the seats at most of the test events. They have met expectations for early ticket sales and volunteered for games duties in such overwhelming numbers that the Turin organizing committee had to stop taking names.

But it will be years before the city can judge the value of its labor and financial commitments. The organizing committee has waged a battle with the Italian government, which wants 30 million, or more than $35 million, in budget cuts.

Turin is hoping to avoid the fate of Athens, which is laboring under a debt of 10 billion from the 2004 Summer Games, and Sydney, which has struggled to use its expensive facilities. Turin hopes its judicious rehabbing of old facilities and careful planning of their post-Games use - something Athens did not begin to do until the games ended - will land it in the small circle of satisfied Olympic cities.

Turin’s planners also hope that the facilities will spark Italian success in new sports. With a long tradition in Alpine skiing, Italians have been slower to embrace snowboarding and freestyle skiing. Organizers hope to turn the freestyle facilities at Sauze d’Oulx into a training center for Italians.

Ivo Ferriani, the manager of the bobsled-luge track in Cesana and a luge Olympian in 1988, is excited about Italy’s first track for his sport. The track built in Cortina for the 1956 Winter Games was for bobsledding only.

“I want people to come here and be amazed,” he said. “I want the athletes to have success, but they also must be passionate. This is important in Italy. They must see the emotions.”

As Ferriani spoke, the sun sparkled on the steel covering the track’s turns. There was construction everywhere - the track was about the only thing at the site that was finished, yet in the mountains, it seems, you can see forever.

TURIN Beyond the city skyline on a misty autumn day, the mountains lurked invisibly behind the clouds. Turin’s grayest season obscured its lovely backdrop. Instead of snow-capped Alps, people here saw a horizon of construction cranes, the omnipresent markers of an Olympic city busily remaking itself for the Winter Games in February.

Its streets not yet festooned in the official Olympic banners, Turin has reminders that are less colorful and far messier. The building-and-fixing boom extends beyond the Olympic sites - most of which are in the final, deadline-driven stages of preparation - to the new apartment and office buildings and to a restoration of so many road surfaces that the city may consider adding a detour sign to its official seal.

The city is clearly lodged squarely in the “Is this going to be worth it?” stage that grips every Olympic city.

The organizers, of course, say yes. They have invested nearly seven years of work in infusing the city with a gleaming set of facilities they believe will have value beyond the games. Among these is the reinvented Palavela, a sail-shaped structure built in 1961 as an exhibition pavilion for the centenary of Italy’s unification. It houses a figure-skating and short-track speedskating arena.

Olympic leaders seized on the games as a way to rehabilitate not only Turin’s buildings but also its image and self-image, which was dented in the early 1990s when the carmaker Fiat pulled its main production facilities from the city. Turin has restored its historic center, its piazzas and porticoed walkways.

“Before, we were a city made for the production of cars,” said Massimo Pianotti, the manager of the primary hockey arena, Palasport Olimpico. “Now we are a city of events, of sports, of tourism. This is very important. I come from Torino and this is very special.”

Pianotti spoke proudly while standing in front of the arena, a stunning rectangular building. It has aluminum panels with windows that flood the hockey rink with light.

The arena is located next to the Olympic stadium, a Mussolini-era soccer stadium that was abandoned by the city’s teams. It is restored and ready to welcome back Torino, and, perhaps, Juventus from their suburban stadium.

“I think it’s important to bring old, historic sites back to some popularity,” said Alessandro Deleonardis, the Palavela manager. “It will help the people of Turin look differently at what they have.”

The organizers have been pleased with the response of Turin’s citizens, who have filled the seats at most of the test events. They have met expectations for early ticket sales and volunteered for games duties in such overwhelming numbers that the Turin organizing committee had to stop taking names.

But it will be years before the city can judge the value of its labor and financial commitments. The organizing committee has waged a battle with the Italian government, which wants 30 million, or more than $35 million, in budget cuts.

Turin is hoping to avoid the fate of Athens, which is laboring under a debt of 10 billion from the 2004 Summer Games, and Sydney, which has struggled to use its expensive facilities. Turin hopes its judicious rehabbing of old facilities and careful planning of their post-Games use - something Athens did not begin to do until the games ended - will land it in the small circle of satisfied Olympic cities.

Turin’s planners also hope that the facilities will spark Italian success in new sports. With a long tradition in Alpine skiing, Italians have been slower to embrace snowboarding and freestyle skiing. Organizers hope to turn the freestyle facilities at Sauze d’Oulx into a training center for Italians.

Ivo Ferriani, the manager of the bobsled-luge track in Cesana and a luge Olympian in 1988, is excited about Italy’s first track for his sport. The track built in Cortina for the 1956 Winter Games was for bobsledding only.

“I want people to come here and be amazed,” he said. “I want the athletes to have success, but they also must be passionate. This is important in Italy. They must see the emotions.”

As Ferriani spoke, the sun sparkled on the steel covering the track’s turns. There was construction everywhere - the track was about the only thing at the site that was finished, yet in the mountains, it seems, you can see forever.

from SI.com

One hundred days before the Opening Ceremonies of the 2006 Winter Games in Turin, Italy, the U.S. women’s hockey team embarked on the longest day of its lives.

For forward Julie Chu, a 5:20 a.m. wake-up call on Nov. 2 was “like a shock” to her system. The team had rolled into New York City just four hours earlier after drubbing the women’s Eastern Collegiate Hockey Association team 6-2 in New Haven, Conn.

Despite the lack of sleep, the women appeared, most of them wearing a fresh layer of makeup, ready to tackle the day with television and print media appearances.

7 a.m. The first stop is NBC’s Today show. In full uniform, the team skates around the ice rink at Rockefeller Center while several ski aerialists jump on trampolines across the street. Meanwhile, Bode Miller talks with Matt Lauer in the studio.

8:45 a.m. Behind schedule, Katie Couric runs across the street from the studio down to the rink to interview the team. Leaning over the boards, she asks the team to give a demonstration of stick-handling and how to shoot a puck.

“Well, you want to transform your weight with the puck,” says defenseman Angela Ruggiero, who, at 25, is making her third Olympic appearance.

Ruggiero slaps a puck. Lined up in a row, the women of the team rapidly tap their sticks onto the ice in unison.

“Katie was supposed to be in skates, and we were supposed to go up to her and spray her [with ice],” Chu says. “She was wearing high heels, so we had to improvise.”

Already behind for its next TV gig, the team packs up its things in a spacious green room beneath the Today studios.

“We got to hustle,” Chu says. To the surprise of the team, Couric drops by to say thanks. They quickly surround the NBC anchor to take photos outside the green room. Couric smiles at Chu, who had given her a tour of the athletes’ village at the ‘02 Salt Lake City Games.

“Julie, you’re still at Harvard?” Couric asks.

“Yeah,” Chu replies as USA Hockey assistants frantically snap shots with a half-dozen digital cameras.

:30 a.m. Chu, Ruggiero and newly appointed captain Krissy Wendell rush to a black car waiting to take them to ESPN’s Cold Pizza studios, 18 blocks away.

“Hey, you just missed Justin Timberlake,” someone yells. But there’s no time to chase him down. The teammates pass through the TKTS booth in Times Square.

“This is where you get cheap tickets for Broadway shows, Krissy” Chu says as Wendell peers out the window. Ruggiero calls her mother to see if she taped the Today show and to explain how to download the women’s hockey games on the Internet.

Sitting in the back seat, the three discuss who will teach Tony Danza how to play hockey for The Tony Danza Show later in the afternoon.

“It’s all you Angela, Wendell says. “We’ll just support you. I heard he’s going to be wearing hockey pads.” Chu says she thinks The Ellen DeGeneres Show would be more fun.

9:50 a.m. The teammates arrive 20 minutes late for the Cold Pizza taping when they run into bobsledder Vonetta Flowers, the first African-American to win a Winter Olympics gold medal at the ‘02 Games.

“I saw you guys on the Today show,” says Flowers, who is also taping a Cold Pizza segment.

“Busy day for Olympic athletes,” Chu replies. The team is quickly escorted to a green room with turquoise walls, a black leather sofa, three chairs and eight TV sets.

“Hey, who was that?” Wendell asks.

“That was Vonetta Flowers — bobsledder,” Chu says. Turning up the TV, Chu smiles as Flowers gives a live interview on ESPN. Wendell and Chu collapse onto the couch to relax for a few minutes before their interview. Ruggiero yawns and says she wants good coffee.

“I don’t drink coffee,” Wendell says, showing off her pearly whites. “Stains your teeth.”

“You can drink it through a straw,” Ruggiero says. “You get coffee from Dunkin’ Donuts. Oh my God, that’s the best.”

10:45 a.m. Goalie Pam Dreyer and forwards Natalie Darwitz and Kelly Stephens arrive at the Cold Pizza studio to meet up for the group interview. While the majority of the team was at the Today shoot, the three players were busy ringing the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange downtown and were stuck in morning traffic. They are rushed to get their makeup touched up.

Darwitz, 22, who rarely puts on makeup, returns wearing mascara. “I feel like a hooker,” she says.

A producer named Pete comes to prep the six players about the five-minute taped interview. He tells them they can shoot at host Jay Crawford, but they can’t kill him.

11:02 a.m. Chu, Stephens and Dreyer stand on a box behind Wendell, Ruggiero and Darwitz, who are seated in front. The players are all wearing USA Hockey fleeces over dress pants, except for Ruggiero, who lost hers at the Today studio and had to wear her jersey.

“You guys have that killer hockey instinct,” Crawford says.

Crawford begins by asking Wendell, the star forward, about veteran Cammi Granato, who was left off the U.S. women’s team for the first time since 1998.

“She’s an amazing person,” Wendell says. “We’ve learned so much from her. She’s definitely someone to be remembered. There’s a little part of Cammi that comes out in all of us.”

Ruggiero is asked about the tight-knit group. “We do everything together,” she says. “We eat together, sleep together.”

A few of the teammates stifle a laugh. The interview ends when Stephens shoots three pucks into a net Crawford is guarding with a baseball mitt and a football helmet. “I wasn’t ready,” he says.

Afterwards, Crawford thanks the group and invites them back when they win a gold medal. The teammates are given Cold Pizza caps and hop into taxis headed for NHL headquarters in Midtown, where they’re scheduled to have lunch with league representatives.

3:54 p.m. The women’s team is taping a segment for The Tony Danza Show at Wollman Rink in Central Park. Danza was a no-show, which made the USA Hockey handlers cranky. Hungry and tired, the day was trying Wendell’s patience, too. The two-hour lunch meeting on the 42nd floor of the NHL headquarters consisted of catered cold-cut sandwiches and soft drinks.

“I’m not going to lie to you,” Wendell says. “Lunch sucked.”

Adds Stephens, “Some of the others were saying what a great lunch they had while we were stuck at the NHL. We had barely eaten anything all day. I mean, come on. We’re women hockey players.”

After signing autographs and interviewing with print media for several hours at Wollman Rink and answering questions about Granato’s absence, Chu offers to buy Wendell a cup of hot cocoa.

“I get asked about Cammi a lot,” Wendell says. “I just try to repeat the same thing over and over. Sometimes [the media] will have follow-up questions, so I’ll just keep saying the same thing.”

The sun begins to go down and Wendell tries to stay warm by sipping her cocoa.

“This has been a never-ending day,” she says. “Me and Chewy are done.”

Just then, the team captain is wanted for a local TV interview. Wendell puts down her hot chocolate and with a weary smile, obliges.

For an athlete who spends his professional career navigating obstacles that come at him with rapid-fire redundancy, it’s ironic that for one memorable evening last August, Nate Roberts’ favorite expression was simply: “Hit me.”

With little restraint, the world champion moguls skier took his raw ambition to the blackjack tables with hopes of hitting a roll. After all, a life of training with no guarantees of money or medals is a gamble and, well, you can probably get better odds at the tables than in an Olympic career.

And so, Roberts, 22, sat down at the Treasure Island casino in Las Vegas with teammate Jaret “Speedy” Peterson, the reigning World Cup champion aerialist, and began to draw cards. Five hours and more than a few 21s later, the pair turned a few hundred dollars into $230,000 each. Roberts, who had been making somewhere in the neighborhood of $20,000 per year, suddenly had a windfall of training expenses paid for.

In a few months, Roberts will try to put his cards on the table again in Turin at the 2006 Olympics. But even that isn’t a given. Considering the wealth of mogul skiers in the U.S., this may be the deepest Olympic team the country has in any sport. Jeremy Bloom, 23, Travis Cabral, 22, Travis Mayer, 22, and Toby Dawson, 26, all have at least one World Cup title on their resumes, and there aren’t enough medals to go around.

“People always pay attention to alpine events,” says Roberts. “But we’ve come a long way and all of us can be on the podium.”

Roberts’ run toward a medal has been as fast on the snow as it was at the table. He was on skis at age 3 and in moguls competitions at 7 in Park City, Utah. One local paper once ran the headline: “Nate the Great Who’s Eight.” Two years later, he incorporated aerials practice into his ski repertoire but feared the big jump gone wrong.

“I was scared of landing on my back and not having that consistent feeling on the snow,” he says. “Mostly I liked going fast, and I’m kind of afraid of heights, if you can believe it.”

Roberts never took to the level turns of alpine racing or the flights of aerials, though he would combine elements of each into his moguls skiing, a blend of speed and hiccup-quick reactions to the changing terrain in front of him.

In late 2003, Roberts jumped from the U.S. “C” team to its “A” team after winning a World Cup competition in Madonna, Italy, not far from the Olympic site in February. It was a whirlwind week for Roberts, whose skis got lost in Customs and didn’t arrive until just before the event.

With little time to practice, he performed a straight-legged backflip with a full twist as one of his jumps during his second run. Until Roberts introduced it, it was a jump previously reserved for aerial events in which skiers accelerated down a smooth runway, preparing only to jump, rather than moguls events in which skiers have already taxed their wind dancing through a course blistered with bumps. The FIS, the international skiing governing body, hadn’t even allowed off-axis tricks until 2002 when Jonny Moseley, then the defending Olympic champ, debuted a skill known as “the dinner roll.”

Two weeks after his victory in Madonna, Roberts attempted the signature jump again at an event in Mont Tremblant, near Montreal. But as he feared when he first started learning aerials, he landed on his back, suffering bruised ribs, a bone bruised tailbone and a wrenched sacroiliac joint in a nasty crash. He remembers not being able to breathe.

“It was important to get back quickly,” he recalls. “I didn’t want the accident in my mind for too long.”

Two weeks later, he placed second in a dual moguls event in Fernie, British Columbia. This year he has landed a double backflip in practice, a skill that will not be allowed in Turin because the FIS will not permit mogul skiers to use new tricks in an Olympic year. He has jumped triple backflips into a pit of water.

Even without those skills, he has already topped loaded fields this season at both in Ruka, Finland, where he won his first world moguls gold medal, and at the U.S. Nationals near his home in Park City, where he won both the moguls and dual moguls crowns.

“Highs and lows,” he says. “I still think about walking away from that crash, how lucky I’ve been.”

With his luck, Roberts still has some good chips left to play.