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American Morning

Olympic Oval Ice Custom Crafted for Top Speeds

Aired February 21, 2002 - 09:20   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: At the Olympics, American athletes enjoyed a huge record-breaking day. The Americans won a total of five medals on the day. Their best one-day Winter Olympic performance in U.S. history. Apolo Ohno won gold after the first place finisher was disqualified. It was the eighth medal for U.S. speed skaters in as many events, tying them with the 1980 team as most prolific medal winning team in U.S. history.

But there may have been something at work here that goes beyond skill and luck, and CNN's Carol Lin has a really slick report.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CAROL LIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It is the athletes or is it the ice? No one knows more about frozen water than Mark Norman, the man who literally designed the ice at the Olympic oval.

MARK NORMAN, ICE DESIGNER: You never see ice like this at the oval.

LIN (on camera): No?

NORMAN: No, this is pretty -- pretty bad.

LIN (voice-over): We met Mark at a local ice rink, where he could explain that all ice is not the same.

NORMAN: These ruts like that? Those would cause a skater to fall. If you can imagine, they are going almost -- even over 40 miles an hour. So if you hit that just the wrong way, that could be enough to make a skater fall.

LIN (on camera): What is this that I keep hearing about Utah ice?

NORMAN: Well, there's a definite difference. We're the highest altitude enclosed-oval in the world.

LIN: What does altitude have to do with ice?

NORMAN: Well, there is less oxygen at high altitude, so there is less oxygen available to freeze into the ice.

LIN (voice-over): At almost a mile above sea level, the less oxygen, the harder the ice. The harder the ice, the faster you go.

(on camera): Consider the average ice cube. It's actually cloudy because it's full of air. Well, the speed oval's ice is so airless that if you were to slice through it, it would be perfectly clear, and the sheet of ice itself is so dense and so hard, that 20 customized layers of frozen water are three quarters of an inch thick.

(voice-over): Mark Norman tells us success or failure on his ice gets down to a matter of degrees.

NORMAN: We change temperatures for every race. We change building temperatures, we change ice temperatures.

LIN (on camera): By how many degrees?

NORMAN: As much as four degrees in the building temperature, and as much as four degrees on the ice.

LIN (voice-over): How does he know? He can monitor the ice oval's condition from home, 24 hours a day, on a special laptop computer.

NORMAN: That's typically where we see most of our problems is between midnight and 6:00 in the morning.

LIN: The hard work is paying off. Mark Norman has no idea how many world records will be set on his ice.

(on camera): You don't want to take any credit for this.

NORMAN: No.

LIN: Six world records.

NORMAN: No, maybe a little bit of credit, but not much.

LIN: Mark thinks it is 10 percent ice, 90 percent athlete. This former speed skater once dreamed of setting his own record at the Olympics until he was injured. But now he is quickly becoming famous as the man who invented the fastest ice in the world.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZAHN: And that was Carol Lin's report. Carol, of course, will be watching the action on the ice tonight as the American women go for the gold in both ice hockey and in figure skating, led by Michelle Kwan.

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