Ya won't believe what I found in the... mountains!
KEARNS, Utah The fist speaks louder than words.
It's a cross between a right jab and a fly-fishing roll cast, and when Apolo Ohno unfurls it at the finish line, the fist says it all:
Yeah, baby. It's all still there the blazing speed, the holy-cow turns, the wind through the helmet, the roar of another crowd. All bigger than life itself. All right where he left it across town a year ago.
Clear skies over Planet Apolo.
Finally. The fist had stayed in the garage for most of Friday and Saturday, when Ohno, in contention for the overall World Cup short-track speedskating title, was disqualified for blocking other skaters during the 500 and 1,500 meters at his only World Cup appearance of the season on home turf.
Ohno, ever the statesman, held it together.
"This was a good day for me," he said in the bowels of the Oval after being tossed out of the 500 on Saturday. "I learned a lot today."
Such as?
A day later, when the start gun went off for the 1,000, we learned what he learned.
Ohno was faster, quicker, stronger skating as he does when he's "on," with the peaceful purpose of a guy moving through 5 o'clock traffic in his own express lane.
He blitzed through the field in two qualifying heats, then lined up in the pressure-cooker finals next to Canada's Jeff Scholten, the lankier speedster who had kicked Ohno's highly regarded derriere on several occasions the previous day.
Not this time. Ohno passed Scholten midway through the race. As the finish loomed and Scholten lurked over Ohno's shoulder, you could almost hear the afterburners kick in. Apolo was gone, riding that Ohnodrive gear that leaves the rest of the world picking roostertail remnants from its teeth.
Before the night ended, he repeated the performance, winning the grueling, 37-lap 3,000 meters, then re-emerging to anchor the U.S. 5,000-meter relay team to a second-place finish against the powerhouse Canadians.
And there you have it. Beneath the Tiger Beat face beats the heart of a leopard a rare melding of grace and brawn in a sport even Gough describes as "NASCAR on ice."
Short track, lest you've forgotten in the year since the Salt Lake Winter Games, is chaos with sponsors. It's beautiful and ugly all at once, and surely is the only sport (outside hockey) in which the Zamboni driver is hastily summoned with these words: "There's a lot of blood over there in the left corner."
Skaters are held on their feet by the equivalent of a knife blade, riding ice that's about as consistently reliable as an Al Roker forecast. Race results are overturned, ex post facto, about half the time by referees.
Through this quagmire soars Ohno, short track's gold-medal Zen assassin, who might actually be nowhere near his physical prime.
Compared to the world's other top skaters, Ohno is disadvantaged by a small U.S. program, which provides him little chance to train with athletic peers. But Gough, himself an experienced Canadian racer, said Ohno is one of the few skaters in the history of the sport capable of winning any race, any distance, any day, on any ice.
Why?
"I'm just hungry," Ohno said, flipping back The Hair and flashing The Smile. "I'm always hungry. I wake up hungry!"
Then he gets serious.
Being back in the game it's nice. Comforting. Solid. Real.
"I'm just doing what I know works best for me," Ohno said. "I'm hungry for knowledge about my sport. I'm hungry for knowledge about how to be a better skater. If you're not hungry, you might as well just hang 'em up."
The internal drive that keeps Apolo Ohno on the ice and out of Jackie Chan movies is no mystery.
"It's pure love of the sport."
And it shows.
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"Highly regarded derriere"..... "rare melding of GRACE & brawn"??
I knew it all along.
Too bad this pic wasn't showing just a wee bit more to the right of him. The little brown blur in the upper right corner is my coat. LOL!!
We'll all be there with you Elaine. 
Although...where's Sherry...General Hospital (the soap
But there was no late-breaking news bulletin about a crazed and demented YaYa rushing onto to the ice to tackle Dorkboy........
