Drama Marks Tumultuous Weekend at Olympics

RAY SUAREZ:

It was a weekend of confrontation, controversy, and near calamity at the Turin Winter Games. First, the confrontation: Saturday night's men's 1,000-meter-long track speed skating finals was a showdown between two members of the U.S. team who are teammates in name only: Shani Davis, the favorite in the event, and Chad Hedrick. Hedrick assailed Davis' decision to skip a team race earlier in the week in which the U.S. finished well out of the skating.

On Saturday, at 1,000 meters, Davis had prepared best, winning by nearly a second and becoming the first black athlete to win an individual gold medal in winter Olympic history. American Joey Cheek took the silver.

The long-running controversy over drugs in sport led to another first Saturday night: The first drug raid in Olympic history. The Austrian biathlon and cross-country ski teams got a serious wakeup call from the Italian police, who raided their quarters searching for performance enhancers and an alleged performance-enhancing coach, Walter Mayer.

GISELLE DAVIES:

Given that Mr. Mayer had been declared ineligible to participate in the winter Olympic Games up to and including 2010 due to his involvement in blood manipulation offenses that were committed at Salt Lake City, the IOC fulfilled its responsibility last night to conduct anti-doping controls on athletes who might have been under his influence.

RAY SUAREZ:

After the raid, an exhausted Austrian men's cross-country ski team finished dead last yesterday in a relay race. Mayer bolted the Olympic village and led authorities on a bizarre car chase in Austria, where he was arrested last night after crashing into a police roadblock.

Back in Turin, the pairs' ice- dancing competition last night was notable more for its faux pas than frigid foxtrot. Amid a night of falls and miscues, three of the final five couples took painful spills. Canadian Marie-France Dubreuil was taken to the hospital after a nasty fall on her hip.

ANNOUNCER:

Oh! My, that's one of those terrible…

RAY SUAREZ:

Those myriad mishaps vaulted a Russian pair into first, and the American couple of Tanith Belbin and Ben Agosto remained upright and skated into second place from sixth.

Joining us now from Turin, Italy is Brian Cazeneuve of Sports Illustrated. Welcome to the program. Have the Italian authorities given any indication why they raided the Austrian cross country team?

BRIAN CAZENEUVE:

Well, there was concern that the different rules that the IOC and the world anti-doping agency apply to most Olympics might be in conflict with Italian law.

Up until this particular raid, there was no such problems, but Italian law is very strict. And this type of raid was something that the police talked about prior to the games. The IOC thought there was some sort of understanding with the Italian police that they would allow testing to take place as usual. But when this tip came forward that Mr. Mayer who was not permitted to be here and has been excluded from the games through 2010 was, in fact, supposedly here with the Austrian team, the IOC told the Italian police, contacted them, the Italian police went ahead and made the raid.

Mr. Mayer didn't turn up in that particular raid but he turned up after this bizarre car chase. And ten athletes from the two teams, biathlon and cross country, were detained for about five hours. And they were tested outside of the normal testing procedures, which is a random test or a test among the medalists. They were neither. They were tested in addition specifically because of the tip and the raid to find Mr. Mayer.

RAY SUAREZ:

Do we yet know if the raid turned up any physical evidence, either in the way of performance-enhancing chemicals or the tools needed to administer them?

BRIAN CAZENEUVE:

We haven't heard that. There is talk that some things may have disappeared out of windows. I talked to somebody this morning who said that was not, in fact, the case. And it's not unusual that we would not have heard anything yet from the actual tests themselves. Those usually take a couple of days to get the results back. And so we should be hearing in the next few days if there were any problems with those particular tests. This is really a first by the way. This is a watershed moment in the history of Olympic testing and doping. Traditionally it's a race between the testers and the cheaters.

And usually the cheaters are one step ahead because the testers have to react to what they're doing. Something like this, something like the preservation of samples so that they can be tested at a later date have sort of upended the tables on the people who would be cheating and have given the people such as the world anti-doping agency a leg up. As I said, this is a watershed moment. It's a first.

RAY SUAREZ:

On to American speed skating, Shani Davis got a lot of attention over the weekend, becoming the first black athlete to win an individual medal. Are there still some chapters left to play in his Olympic story and of that Chad Hedrick?

BRIAN CAZENEUVE:

Well, Davis and Hedrick are two great skaters that come from very unusual backgrounds. Davis, as you mentioned, African-American from the inner city of Chicago grew up roller skating. Chad Hedrick was an inline skater not a traditional ice skater. He's from the great winter Olympic state of Texas, believe it or not. He was a 50-time world champion in the inline world and only three years ago converted to the ice.

Both of them have won world all round championships and both of them have won gold medals here. You mentioned Davis winning the 1000; Hedrick won the 5,000, the first gold medal of the speed skating competition.

And they'll be going at it again in the 1500 on Tuesday and then on Thursday they have the 10,000. I think Hedrick is probably a favorite in the 10,000. Both Davis and Hedrick are very good in the 1500. Both have held the world record in that event at one time or another. So the 1500 should be an excellent competition.

RAY SUAREZ:

Is the bad blood over the team event and the difficulties that Davis has had with the U.S. skating authorities overshadowing what should be a very upbeat and historic moment in this Olympics?

BRIAN CAZENEUVE:

Well, somewhat. The team event is actually new. It's the first time they've had the team pursuit in the Olympics so the Americans wanted to put their best three skaters out there at the same time. And certainly Davis would have been one of them.

There is no tradition of skaters being compelled to participate in the pursuit because they haven't had it yet. Obviously if Davis had been in there together with Hedrick, the Americans probably would have advanced past the Italian team in the quarterfinals and may very well have won a gold medal which would have given Hedrick a chance to win four.

A lot of people feel that he can win the 1500 and the 10,000 which would be make him second only to Eric Heiden in Olympic history.

There is bad blood in the sense that many people felt that Davis acted selfishly. He had two days in between the pursuit and his next race, the 1,000 meters. And he wanted to have fresh legs.

Hedrick competed as well in the thousand meters and actually led before Davis skated, but Hedrick participated. He felt that he was a team player. People like Eric Heiden have come out and said that Davis was not a team player. Davis said, hey, I'm going to do what's best for me. My best chance to win a gold medal is the 1,000. I'm going to prepare for that first. If the pursuit had been afterwards, I might have participated.

And it's hard to question his decision now that he's a gold medalist in 1,000.

RAY SUAREZ:

Finally to ice dancing, people probably tuned in last night and saw skaters spending an uncharacteristic amount of time actually on the ice. What was going on?

BRIAN CAZENEUVE:

You know, you go to a Winter Olympics and you think about ski jumping and skeleton and ice hockey. And the most dangerous sport, the most dangerous event turns out to be ice dancing.

It was a very unusual competition because unlike the pairs event in which you can have throws and lifts and much more dangerous elements, the ice dancers are not supposed to have those dangerous elements. They're not supposed to fall. They're not supposed to be on the ice.

But four of the couples did including the Italian couple that was leading. And so now the Russian couple that was supposed to be the favorite is back on top. But one note about that: Navka and Kostomarov, Tatiana Navka, who is the woman from that pair, she actually came here after having a very serious fall herself in the European championships where she had a very bad cut on her hand and had a little bit of nerve damage.

So, there's been a tradition over the past year of some unsightly events happening in ice dancing. It's not supposed to be that way but it's added to the drama of the competition.

RAY SUAREZ:

So it's not all sequins and lace. You can actually get hurt out there.

BRIAN CAZENEUVE:

Yes, sequins, lace and some side boards, hitting some unsuspecting skaters I suppose.

RAY SUAREZ:

Brian Cazeneuve, thanks for joining us.

BRIAN CAZENEUVE:

Thank you.