Ciao Olympics 2006

Across 16 topsy-turvy days in Turin, the U.S. Olympic team teetered somewhere between torment and triumph, each step up to the medal stand tempered by one step back somewhere else. There were unlikely Alpine golds from skiers Julia Mancuso and Ted Ligety. And the disaster in the mountains that was Bode Miller and his tattered reputation.

Speedskater Joey Cheek set a standard for Olympic class, winning two medals and donating his $40,000 reward from the U.S. Olympic Committee to a charity for children trapped in war zones. Teammates Chad Hedrick and Shani Davis typified something less than class, fussing and fighting like second-graders in a sandbox.

A kid dubbed "The Flying Tomato," Shaun White, sailed into the sky above Bardonecchia to claim a gold medal in the snowboard halfpipe. Another snowboarder, Lindsey Jacobellis, hot-dogged her way out of a gold medal in a still-stunning turn of events that typified a growing Generation X Games gap among the Americans.

No one came into the games with higher expectations than skier Miller and speedskater Hedrick, each entered in five events. Miller won nothing; Hedrick collected a gold, silver and bronze but dulled his wins by yapping with Davis. The U.S. medal haul came from their domination in men's long-track speedskating and snowboarding, with seven medals apiece. Short track skater Apolo Anton Ohno added a gold and two bronzes, one of the latter in a relay event.

The games' most enduring moment was also its most bizarre. Jacobellis, on the next-to-last jump of the first women's Olympic snowboardcross, grabbed her board in an unnecessary bit of showboating - and then crashed, blowing her gold medal. Her silver seemed almost insignificant. The stunt was endlessly replayed, with Jacobellis alternately cheered (by the snowboard community) and chastised (by everyone over 40).

The disagreement demonstrated a generation gap involving the age of the sports, not the athletes. The new wave U.S. Olympians on snowboards or skis wanted to put on a show ... and maybe get a medal, too. Take aerial skier Jeret "Speedy" Peterson. A seventh-place finish in the aerials couldn't wipe the smile off his face. "I came here to do the Hurricane," he said, referring to the difficult maneuver, "and I did the Hurricane." Never mind that he botched it. Or that an easier stunt might have won a medal.

Tanith Belbin, a Canadian who won American citizenship on Dec. 31, came to Turin and won a surprising silver medal with ice dancing partner Ben Agosto on Feb. 21. But Michele Kwan, plagued by a groin injury, never reached the ice and Sasha Cohen was lucky to win the Silver where the gold was in easy reach, if she had not fallen on her first two jumps in the long program.

The surprising U.S. men's curling team swept through the competition to grab a bronze - the first American Olympic medal in the sport - when skip Pete Fenson delivered a clutch shot on the last stone of the match.