And the gold medal goes to...

With the Olympic winter games in full swing, I've done a lot of thinking about my favorite moments from the many Olympiads I've been fortunate enough to watch on television.

The Olympics are truly a wonderful spectacle, both for the level of athletic competition, and for their ability to sometimes blur the divisive lines of political ideology, if only for a couple weeks.

Images comes to my mind for various reasons.

There is Franz Klammer, the Austrian skier who threw caution to the wind in the '76 winter games and sped to the gold in the men's downhill. I cannot forget Japanese gymnast Shun Fujimoto, who, while knowing he had a broken kneecap suffered earlier during the floor exercises, still chose to participate in the rings, knowing he would have to land his dismount on a broken leg. He dislocated his knee and tore ligaments when he landed, but his performance helped propel the Japanese team to a gold medal. And of course, there are the horrible images surrounding the '72 Olympics in Munich, when 11 Israeli athletes and coaches, as well as a West German police officer, were massacred by a terrorist group.

In 1980, a group of college hockey players galvanized the nation by giving us the "Miracle on Ice," an unbelievable 4-3 victory over the heavily favored Soviet team. The entire country celebrated the win, and for me, it meant vindication from the '72 games, when the American basketball team was robbed of a gold medal when the final 3 seconds of the game — also against the Soviet Union — were replayed three times until the Sovets won.

The games also provide me with a segue into handing out my own medals of sorts. In this column in the Jan. 30 papers, I challenged readers to come up with the real names of 10 athletes whom I had identified by nicknames.

The gold medal winner was Stuart Rowe of Orland, with Corning's Brad Gravitt taking the silver.

Due to a completely underwhelming response (meaning they were the only two who replied) there is no bronze-medal recipient.

The athletes, preceded by their nicknames, were: The Rajah: Rogers Hornsby; The Hick from French Lick: Larry Bird; Awesome Bill from Dawsonville: Bill Elliott; Night Train: Dick Lane; Clyde: Walt Frazier; The Great White Shark: Greg Norman; The Spaceman: Bill Lee; The Pocket Rocket: Henri Richard; Gentleman Jim: Jim Corbett; Le Grande Orange: Rusty Staub.

I guess it was probably be four years before I hold another contest.

Craig Purcell is sports editor for Tri-County Newspapers. Contact him at 824-1036 or cpurcell@tcnpress.com