Turner’s Career Winds Up With a Whimper, Not a Bang

NAGANO, Japan —  She cried, she laughed, she came and went in her return to Olympic speedskating Tuesday night.

That was it.

About 4 1/2 minutes as a member of the United States’ 3,000-meter short-track relay team that was eliminated in a semifinal heat.

About 4 1/2 more as the team came back to win a consolation heat, finishing fifth overall.

Hardly time to provoke an international incident in what is being called the last peace festival of the 20th century.

No medal and no controversy--both significant developments in that controversy hounded her medal-winning career as America’s most successful short-track performer.

Indeed, Cathy Turner could jam like no other in a sport resembling roller derby on ice, but she had little chance Tuesday night in what was her first and last chance of these Olympics.

Was it worth coming out of retirement for a second or third time for this?

“I feel like I challenged myself and succeeded,” she said, now 35, having teamed in this relay with two teenagers and a 26-year-old.

“If this was strictly about gold medals, I would never have quit. Just to be here, back in the Olympics, is unbelievable. I mean, one minute I’m crying and the next I’m laughing. I had a ball out there.”

The U.S. was last off the line in its semifinal heat and never recovered. It was the first time since short track became a medal sport in 1992 that U.S. women didn’t medal in the relay.

Turner was bidding to become the second U.S. woman to win five medals in the Winter Games, joining Bonnie Blair, who won six, but the U.S. was in the more difficult heat.

South Korea won it and went on to successfully defend the Olympic crown it won with a team that averaged 15 1/2 years in 1994.

China also came out of the U.S. heat to take the silver. Canada won the bronze.

Some of Turner’s familiar shoot-from-the-lip style emerged when asked about the difficult heat.

“I enjoyed it,” she said. “I’m not the type person who’s afraid of anybody, but I think the other girls were intimidated by that--and I know our coaches were.”

Coach Jeroen Otter said it wasn’t a question of intimidation.

“They say if you can’t beat them in the semifinal, you can’t beat them in the final, and that’s the reality, but I’d rather have been in the other heat,” he said.

There were pockets of enthusiastic partisanship throughout the White Ring, including a large group of South Korea fans who crossed the 38th parallel and waved a North Korea flag.

Turner said she told her younger teammates “to have fun, enjoy what you’re here to do, remember this is the Olympics and that’s cool in itself. We got behind and things got worse. I think they were trying too hard. They’re young. They’ll have a lot of chances.”

Turner won’t because she didn’t qualify for the 500 meters, which she won in 1992 and ’94. Two younger skaters beat her out in the U.S. trials after she came out of retirement in October 1996, having seen the times that were being recorded and believing she could eclipse them.

“I got a late start [on my comeback],” she said, “and had problems for a long time with my skates. Is it frustrating not competing in an individual event here? Sure, especially the way I’m skating now. I’d have been an absolute contender. I felt great out there tonight. I’m sure my [relay] legs may have been the fastest.”

Perhaps, but maybe it’s a case of the spirit being more willing than the flesh. Maybe she had to test the fire one more time.

In the three years since Lillehammer, she had been operating a health club she owns in New York, doing some singing, making infomercials and appearing in a Grade B movie or two.

Now? She said she would like to expand that film career and thinks she has a lot to offer as a motivational speaker.

“I’ve always said never say never, but I told my mom that never is now,” Turner said, referring to the end of a skating career in which she was involved in a series of Olympic collisions and controversies--one of which prompted China’s Zhang Yanmei to storm off the medal stand in 1994, stuffing her silver in a pocket and throwing her honorary bouquet on the ground in protest of the judges’ refusal to disqualify Turner over a bumping incident.

Zhang and others called her a dirty skater, and Turner was disqualified at Lillehammer in the 1,000 meters for cutting in front of a Korean skater during a semifinal heat.

How should she be remembered, this 5-foot-2 tiger who would slip into her mother’s bedroom as a youngster, drag a chair up to the full-length mirror and rehearse waving to the crowd as an Olympic medal was put around her neck?

“I’ve been called aggressive,” she said, using the polite term, “and that’s the greatest compliment I could receive. I couldn’t let the big girls intimidate me, and I hope people can respect me for what I did and how I went about it. I hope they can respect me for being the great athlete I am.”

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MEDALISTS

Short-Track Speedskating

WOMEN’S 3,000-METER RELAY

Gold: South Korea

Silver: China

Bronze: Canada