By Bob Markus

In 36 years of writing sports for The Chicago Tribune, I covered almost every event imaginable, from World Cup soccer to Davis Cup tennis, from Super bowls to Independence bowls (ghastly weather in Shreveport, La. , in December.) NCAA Final Fours, NIT finals, championship games in all the major pro sports, yeah, been there, done that. Not to mention--and I'd really rather not--archery, handball, squash, weightlifting and bowling. But there's one major event I never covered--the Winter Olympics. That one hole in my curriculum vitae never bothered me much, since I never liked winter, anyway, which is why I moved to Florida as soon as it became expedient to do so. My interest in the Winter Games was never as high as my fascination with the Summer Games and I suspect that is the case with the majority of sports fans. I do like to watch the downhill skiing, but speed skating would leave me cold even if it weren't a cold weather sport. If there's anything more boring than watching a 5,000 meter speed skating event, it's sitting in the newsroom and taking the speed skating results over the phone, a chore that befell me every winter until I was lucky enough to get unchained from the copy desk and become a fulltime writer.

There were a couple of reasons why The Tribune had such an avid interest in speed skating. Most importantly, the paper sponsored a competition called The Silver Skates, named after the children's classic "Hans Brinker or The Silver Skates." In case you're wondering, the book was better than the play. Then, too, the Chicago suburb of Northbrook, where I lived for a few years, was a hotbed of speed skating which, under the guidance of Coach Ed Rudolph, supplied most of the USA's Olympians, including super stars Diane Holum and Eric Heiden. Heiden still stands out as the country's greatest Olympic speed skater even if Apolo Ohno, who in the Vancouver games has so far added two medals to his growing total, could end up with nine pieces of Olympic jewelry. But of his seven medals so far, only two have been gold and one of those was an outright gift from a Korean skater who was disqualified while leading a 2002 race. Heiden's five medals are all gold. Case closed.

There's little doubt that the center piece of the Winter Games, at least among women, is figure skating, particularly women's figure skating. Going all the way back to Sonia Henie in the 1920s and 30s, the Olympic women's champion figure skater is one of the most famous and admired women in the world. I find figure skating only a little less boring than speed skating, although the music is nice and if I just close my eyes and listen it's not too bad. I seldom intentionally watch figure skating. But about a week ago I was passing the living room TV set when I happened to look at the screen and saw what I later described to my wife as "the greatest figure skating routine I've ever seen." Turns out it was the greatest routine anybody has ever seen, a world record performance that would propel the Chinese pair of Shen Xue and Hongbo Zhao to a gold medal. Don't expect Xue and Zhao to become household names, even in China where they know how to pronounce those names. For some reason pairs skaters just don't get the same adulation as the individual winners.

Of course you don't always have to win gold in the Olympics to become a star. Sometimes any old kind of medal will do (see Apolo Anton Ohno above). Where is Vince Lombardi when we need him? There have been several compelling story lines for Bob Costas and friends to delve into, including Lindsey Vonn, she of the sore shin and women's downhill gold medal; speed skater Shani Davis, who may be the only athlete in Vancouver and environs who thinks to win a silver medal is to know the agony of defeat; and the U.S. hockey team that defeated Canada for the first time in a half century. But the story of the Winter Olympics so far has to be Bode Miller. When they make the movie it will be called: Redemption. Seldom has an Olympic athlete been so vilified as was Miller after the 2006 Winter Games in Turin. But as Tiger Woods might say, he brought it on himself. Miller went into those games the world champion and favored to mine more gold than a 49er. The only gold he saw in the entire two weeks was Cuervo Gold. "It's been an awesome two weeks," said Miller at the time. "I got to party at an Olympic level." Unfortunately he did not ski at an Olympic level. He further alienated the skiing estblishment a year later when he quit the U.S. ski team and skiied as an independant for two years. A year later he failed to win a race for the first time in his career and early this year sprained an ankle playing volleyball. Not much was expected of him when the Olympics began, but so far he has won three medals, including the gold medal he was supposed to win four years ago.

When I think about it, I have some regrets over never having covered a Winter Olympics. There are some good stories out there and what more could a sports writer want? Except, perhaps, to cover them without having to wear galoshes and a ski mask.