US has been coldly efficient

KIMMIE MEISSNER Four Continents meet is next

It's been a winter wonderland so far for US athletes, who've already won 10 world medals with upcoming global championships in skiing, figure skating, and speedskating likely to provide more. Experience has been the biggest factor; the winners of nearly half of last year's 25 medals in Turin have returned for another season, if not another quadrennium.

The biggest splash has been made by the skeleton sledders, who had a nightmarish Olympics soured by scandal. They won four medals, including a gold by Noelle Pikus-Pace , whose broken leg early last season cost her a trip to the Games. Also making the podium with a bronze was Zach Lund, who was booted off last year's team after testing positive for a masking agent.

Maybe the Alpine people shouldn't have done their snow dance. The World Championships in Sweden, which were supposed to have started last Saturday, were called off for the third straight day yesterday, this time for fog and wind in the wake of a massive dump of white stuff. "We waited for snow for four months, so we can't start complaining now," shrugged international federation president Gian Franco Kasper. If and when competition begins today, Bode Miller will defend his Super G title. The one he craves, though, is the slalom, the only one he lacks in his bid to become the first skier to win all five. Odds are long, though. Until his most recent World Cup outing in Austria, where he finished last, Miller hadn't completed both slalom runs in more than a year . . . How quickly did Russia's figure skating dynasty hit bottom after its top people retired? After winning three of the four Olympic titles in Turin, the Motherland had its worst showing at the European championships in 25 years, managing just two silver medals, in pairs and dance. The French, meanwhile, won two golds, and Carolina Kostner claimed Italy's first women's title . . . As a tuneup for next month's World Figure Skating Championships in Tokyo, the US is sending all four of its newly-crowned national champions as well as most of the other medalists to the Four Continents Championships, which start tomorrow in Colorado Springs. Kimmie Meissner will be up against Japan's Fumie Suguri and Yoshie Onda . Evan Lysacek will face Canada's Jeffrey Buttle and Emanuel Sandhu. Brooke Castile and Ben Okolski , the surprise pairs victors, will get their baptism against Chinese world champs Qing Pang and Jian Tong and countrymen Shen Xue and Zhao Hongbo . And dancers Tanith Belbin and Benjamin Agosto will duel Canada's Marie-France Dubreuil and Patrice Lauzon .

Spokane, which drew nearly 155,000 spectators for the week, demolished the attendance record for figure skating nationals (125,345) set by Los Angeles in 2002, when the event determined the Olympic team for Salt Lake City. That will reinforce US Figure Skating's inclination to hold future events in smaller cities (like St. Paul next year). Skate America, which played to lots of empty seats in Hartford last fall, will be in Reading, Pa., next time . . . Meissner barely got the US skating crown on her head before the endorsement deals began rolling in: Visa, Subway, and Under Armour. The Subway deal actually saves Meissner hundreds of dollars a year, since she buys their turkey subs every day en route to practice at her Delaware rink . . . After picking up the bronze medal at last month's World Sprint Championships in Norway, speedskater Shani Davis goes after his third straight all-around crown next weekend in the Netherlands, where his top challengers will be Enrico Fabris of Italy and homeboys Erben Wennemars and Sven Kramer . Davis, who'd be the first man to three-peat since Eric Heiden in 1979, earned a personal victory recently when an arbitrator awarded him four months' training expenses that were taken away last season by US Speedskating amid a sponsorship dispute . . . Back in action on the short-track circuit is Arlington native Sarah Lang, who made the US team again this winter at 29 after coming out of retirement and being diagnosed last fall with Crohn's disease, a chronic inflammatory bowel ailment. Lang, who made a 1,000-meter final in the Netherlands last weekend, will compete in this weekend's World Cup finale in Budapest.

Bad luck for US bobsledder Steven Holcomb , who damaged ligaments in his thumb when his push bar collapsed at last weekend's World Championships in Switzerland and missed a four-man medal by two-100ths of a second after finishing fourth in the two-man race. Holcomb, who'd won the previous two four-man races on the World Cup circuit, still leads Canada's Pierre Lueders in the overall chase by 25 points with three weekends to go. The Yanks did make the podium at the women's championships, though, with Shauna Rohbock and Valerie Fleming taking third behind two German sleds . . . Things finally are looking up for the US lugers, whose only individual World Cup medal of the season was Tony Benshoof's bronze in a wind-shortened competition in Germany. Mark Grimmette and Brian Martin came out of seventh place to win the doubles bronze at last weekend's World Championships in Austria, and three American women (including Julia Clukey of Augusta, Maine, and Ashley Hayden of Westborough) finished in the top 10. The Germans swept all three golds, six of nine medals, and went 1-2-3-4 in the women's event . . . Norway's Ole Einar Bjoerndalen , who is 2 for 2 at the World Biathlon Championships in Italy with another shot today, is going to pass up a chance at his third straight overall World Cup crown to compete in this month's World Nordic Championships, which would be an unprecedented double in the same year. The female equivalent of Bjoerndalen might be Magdalena Neuner , the 19-year-old German who's also 2 for 2 in Italy with a third chance tomorrow.

More than three decades after Bill Koch won the only US Olympic medal in cross-country, fortunes are on the rise for his successors. Kikkan Randall became the first American woman to make a World Cup podium last month (third place), and Torin Koos and Andy Newell's 3-4 placement in Estonia was the best men's showing since 1983 . . . The Beijing Games are still 18 months away but the first two US Olympians already have been chosen. Christina Jones and Andrea Nott won the duet ticket on the synchronized swimming team in the December trials in Columbus. "It's pretty crazy being a part of the Olympic team already," said Jones. "But it's not so weird for this sport." . . . The US men's soccer team, which beat Denmark last month in its first post-World Cup match, puts its home winning streak on the line against archrival Mexico tomorrow in Glendale, Ariz. The Yanks haven't lost at home to Los Tricolores (6-0-1) in this millennium, outscoring them, 11-0 . . . This year's Boston Marathon, which already has the world's three top women in Deena Kastor, Jelena Prokopcuka, and Rita Jeptoo , will also have a deep domestic field. The reason: the race doubles as the US championships, which means that the top two qualify for this summer's World Championships in Osaka and the top 10 will divvy up $70,000 in prize money plus whatever BAA payouts they earn. Kastor, who is making her Boston debut, will tune up by leading the loaded US team in the Yokohama Ekiden Feb. 25. After finishing a dismal 13th last year with a decidedly JV team, the Yanks are sending the big guns this time: Elva Dryer , Katie McGregor , Jen Rhines, Amy Rudolph, and Sara Slattery.

Material from Olympic committees, sports federations, interviews, and wire services was used in this report.