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The Results from Torino 2006 Menu
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| ALPINE SKIING incl. snowboarding and freestyle skiing | |
| BIATHLON | NORDIC SKIING incl. nordic combined and ski jumping |
| BOB | LUGE |
| FIGURE SKATING |
SPEED SKATING incl. short track |
| CURLING | ICE HOCKEY |
446 competitors from 26 countries won medals at Torino (known as Turin in the English-speaking world). The oldest was US curling team member Scott Baird, aged 54. He actually did not play in any match and was listed as the Alternate (as the reserve player is called in curling). Nevertheless, he won a Bronze medal.
The youngest was 15-year old Italian short-track speed skater Arianna Fontana, who was a member of the 3000m relay team that won the Bronze medal.
Of the Olympic champions of Torino, Canadian
curler Russ Howard was the oldest at 50 years of age. He skippered his team to
the men's Gold. The youngest is Korean short-track speed skater Jin Sun-Yu who
is 17 years old. She won Gold in the 1000m, 1500m and the 3000m relay. A triple
Olympic champion at age 17!
Another milestone was achieved by three other medal winners. Before Torino, only
Georg Hackl of Germany and Raisa Smetanina of the Soviet Union had won Olympic
Winter medals at 5 games. Smetanina was the first to achieve this and won a
total of 4 Gold, 5 Silver and a Bronze in cross-country skiing between 1976 and
1992. The next to join her was Georg Hackl, who competed in the single luge
event between 1988 and 2006. He placed second in '88 and '02 and won the event
three times in a row between '92 and '98. Unfortunately, at Torino he could only
manage 7th place behind his nemesis of recent Olympics, Italy's Armin Zöggeler.
But three more athletes were added to this distinguished list, and all of them
from Germany.The first was 34-year old speekskater Claudia Pechstein, who won a
Gold in the new Team Pursuit event and a silver in the 5000m. This brought her
tally to 5 Gold, 2 Silver and 2 Bronze since her first medal at Lillehammer in
1994.
Next was 35-year old Biathlon star Ricco Groß, who was part of the victorious
4x7½km men's relay team. It brought his medal haul to eight, including 4 Gold
(all team relay), 3 Silver and 1 Bronze since his first at Albertville in 1992.
Finally, Biathlon competitor Uschi Disl, also 35 years old. Since Albertville,
she has been on the podium nine times, for a total of 2 (relay) Gold, 4 Silver
and 3 Bronze. It was a single Bronze at Torino in the 12½km individual race
that moved her into this club of super achievers.
Only 27 athletes have done this, including four who actually won medals at SIX
Olympic Games. They are (years won shown in brackets) Hungarian fencer Aladár
Gerevich (1932-1960), German event rider Hans-Günter Winkler (1956-1976),
Romanian rower Elisabeta Lipa (1984-2004) and German canoeist Birgit Fischer
(1980-2004).
Gerevich died in 1991, Winkler is now 79, Lipa just 41 and Birgit
Schmidt-Fischer is now 44. They are the true champions of the Olympic spirit.
Perhaps only a few have come close, even though they did not quite achieve the
same medal tally, like Sir Durward Knowles, the sailor from the Bahamas who, in 1988 competed in his eighth Olympics at age 70 and placed 19th (from 21) in the Star
class, or Swedish shooter Ragnar Skanåker who competed at his 7th Olympics in
1996, aged 62.