Speed skater Okazaki gets Olympic dream bronze

February 14, 1998

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Speed skater Okazaki gets Olympic dream bronze

Women across the country Saturday sent their boyfriends and the other men in their lives chocolate for Valentine's Day. Tomomi Okazaki gave her father an Olympic bronze medal.

The two-time Olympian confounded the pundits by skating the two fastest times of her life to finish third in the women's 500 meters event, beating a pair of former world sprint champions in the process.

''This medal goes to my dad as a Valentine's Day gift,'' said a smiling Okazaki, whose tinted brown hair matched the color of her lacquered medal.

''I had dreamed about winning a medal but never thought I had any realistic chance. It feels incredible to actually do it,'' she added.

Okazaki is no stranger to the medals podium.

The popular 26-year-old from Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost main island, has won six events in her career on the World Cup circuit, including five at 500 meters. She was also third at this distance in the 1996 single distance world championships in Hamar, Norway.

But after slap skates reshaped the contours of the sport last season, Okazaki slid further and further behind. She had problems adjusting to the radical new blades and it showed in her disappointing results on the World Cup circuit this season.

Officials of the Japan Skating Federation dismissed her and Japan's other women sprinters as having no real chance for a medal at the Olympics, focusing their attention, instead, on the male skaters.

Okazaki proved them wrong.

Her technique on the slap skates finally started to click. At the national sprint championships last December, she posted a domestic rink record of 38.99 seconds at the M-Wave indoor oval.

And on Saturday, Okazaki rounded the track in a national record of 38.55 seconds, matching her time on Friday. Her two-race total of 1:17.10 put her 0.35 second ahead of Germany's former world sprint champion Franziska Schenk.

Okazaki's feat gave Japan its first women's Olympic medal at this distance and its third women's speed skating medal overall.

Seiko Hashimoto won the 1,500-meter bronze in Albertville in 1992 and Hiromi Yamamoto reaped the bronze at 5,000 meters in Lillehammer four years ago.

''The color of my medal may not be so shiny, but this is the most glittering moment of my career,'' Okazaki said. (Kyodo News)

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