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CNN Live Saturday
Saturday Features Final Hours of Olympic Action
Aired February 23, 2002 - 12:38 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.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: With the closing ceremony only about 36 hours away, there's still plenty of unfinished Olympic competitive business. The men's hockey gold medal game is set for Sunday afternoon. And the U.S. faces off against Canada after a tough win against the Russians last night.
Our Carol Lin joins us now from Salt Lake City with more on that. Is that the buzz out there?
CAROL LIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm sorry, Fredricka, what did you say?
WHITFIELD: Is that the buzz -- is that the buzz right now, just the match up between...
LIN: Oh, yeah.
WHITFIELD: ... Canada and the U.S.?
LIN: Yeah, it's a big one. As you know by now, the United States beat Russia yesterday in a three to two match. And now they're facing off to Canada. And according to one of the U.S. team members there, it's like jumping from the frying pan into the fire. You know, hockey to Canada is like baseball to the United States. And it's going to be one of the tightest matches since the one seen back in 1960, when the United States faced off with Canada, but won the gold then.
So widely anticipated, this game tonight. And it's going to be incredibly competitive. In the meantime, Fredricka, two records set on ice yesterday. The Dutch speed skater Yokum Oltahagga (ph) not only won the gold in the 10,000-meter long speed skating competition, but also broke a world record. And that means that another record was set on that speed oval. Utah's speed oval is now the fastest ice in the world. More world records have been set on that speed oval than on any indoor speed oval in the entire world. And we went out to try to figure out why.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
LIN (voice-over): Is it the athletes or is 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 SPECIALIST: You'd 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 (ph) at a local ice rink where he could explain that all ice is not the same.
NORMAN: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) like that, those would cause a skater to fall. If you can imagine, they're 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 is a definite difference. We're the highest attitude enclosed oval in the world.
LIN: What does altitude have to do with ice?
NORMAN: Well, there's lots of oxygen in high altitudes, so there's lots of 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. See, 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 only three-quarters of an inch thick.
(voice-over): Mark Norman (ph) 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 six 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 -- maybe a little bit of credit, but not much.
LIN (voice-over): Mark thinks it's 10 percent ice, 90 percent athlete. This former speed skater once dreamed of setting his own records at the Olympics until he was injured. But now he's quickly becoming famous as the man who invented the fastest ice in the world.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
LIN: And more action on that ice today, Fredricka. Apolo Ohno, the American speed skater, has a chance to go for two more medals -- two more events on that speed oval today.
WHITFIELD: All right. Thanks a lot. I can't wait to watch that one. Everybody will be rooting for him.
LIN: Yeah.
WHITFIELD: Thanks a lot, Carol Lin, from Salt Lake.
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