He came to praise, not bury athletes

TURIN -- Just call me Il Becchino.

That's Italian for The Undertaker.

I buried a lot of Americans, such as Bode Miller at the downhill, Jeremy Bloom at the moguls, and Johnny Weir in the long program. In each case I had come to praise, and in each case I wound up burying them. The women's and men's hockey teams made for burials Nos. 4 and 5, though I did come back to see the ladies take the bronze. But on the whole, US coaches would have been well-advised to have my picture posted at all venues with the admonition, ''Do Not Let This Man Enter."

The only safe place for my boss to send me was the Oval Lingotto, where the US male speedskaters often reigned supreme. There I was able to bring home the good news about Joey Cheek and Shani Davis. (Chad Hedrick won his gold in the 5,000 in my absence).

I will never forget the Oval Lingotto, for in that building I encountered both my most pleasant and most bizarre moments of the 2006 Winter Olympics. No one who showed up for the press conference following Cheek's victory was ready for what transpired. It wasn't just that he announced his intention to donate the $25,000 he'd be receiving for winning the gold (plus any future winnings) to Johann Olav Koss's ''Right To Play" charity organization; it was the ebullient manner in which he did it. There wasn't a smidgen of self-congratulation in his voice. I don't know the man. He could be a colossal phony. There is always a risk in prematurely canonizing these athletes (I, for example, named my golden retriever after Kirby Puckett), but if Joey Cheek turns out to be a con man I suspect there really is no chance for American civilization.

The Oval Lingotto was also the site of the Turin Press Conference To End All Press Conferences following the men's 1,500-meter race in which American combatants Davis and Hedrick were relegated to lower steps on the podium by Italy's Enrico Fabris. The media session ended with Davis lashing out at Hedrick for not shaking his hand after his victorious 1,000 and Hedrick responding by accusing Davis of costing the US a possible medal with his decision not to race in the team pursuit. All this took place in the last minute of a half-hour session. It was like having all the action in a 15-round heavyweight title fight occurring in the final 30 seconds.

Since no one can be everywhere in an Olympics, a lot of what we see takes place on television. It is not uncommon to be sitting in your office at the media center and hearing shouts, cheers, and assorted oohs and aahs all over the building. Many nationalities are a lot less, shall we say, detached in their approach to coverage than we are in America, and it is always a treat to hear the reaction from other offices as things are going on. One of our neighbors this year, for example, was Xinhua News Agency, which serves China. Let's just say these folks do not watch their nation's athletes in silence.

But there was one moment when you could hear American voices all over the building. That took place on the afternoon of Feb. 17, when a heretofore unknown (to us mainstream sorts, anyway) snowboardcross competitor named Lindsey Jacobellis, on the verge of a gold medal -- so far ahead in an accident-marred race that there was no one on the screen but her -- decided to embellish her penultimate jump in what we were subsequently informed was a classic snowboard gesture and wound up on her rear end. She did scramble to her feet in time to finish second, but she had tossed away the gold.

All over the building, this is what you heard. ''Whoa!!!! Did you see that?" The Jacobellis incident immediately became the topic of conversation among the Americans, and it led to an earnest discussion about the value of a medal and whether these carefree snowboarders really are fit to associate with the likes of hard-nose biathletes. This is an argument that will still be raging right into the Vancouver opening ceremonies four years hence.

A word about Turin: Magnifico!

Because this is the headquarters of Fiat, Turin was pitched to us as Italy's Detroit. No offense to Detroit, but on its very best day in the 20th century Detroit never had a second where it was remotely in Turin's league. Turin is a classically impressive European city with superb architecture; great piazzas; a vibrant and seemingly endless downtown; and cafes, bars, and restaurants about every 6 feet. I can't compare it with any American city because we just don't have cities that look like this.

Can you imagine a city with 18 kilometers (more than 11 miles) of porticoes? Of course not. You can walk forever on a rainy day and not get wet.

The food is predictably great, but let me say a word about the pizza, which really is ubiquitous. The pizza is generally fine, but I must tell you that I twice ate at a restaurant called Gennaro Esposito, which is reputed to be the finest pizza restaurant in the city, and while it was perfectly OK, it could not touch the pizza at the original Regina's on Thatcher Street, and it most certainly was not in a class with the pizza at Santarpio's, the venerable East Boston institution. So there.

We construct our private little Olympics, and for me the highlight has become the men's 4 x 10-kilometer cross-country relay. I stumbled onto this event in 1994 at Lillehammer, when the Italians defeated the Norwegians by four-10ths of a second. This inaugurated a phenomenal rivalry in which Norway similarly upended Italy by photo-finish margins of three-10ths and two-10ths in the next two Olympics. This meant that in 120 kilometers worth of skiing, over three Olympics, the total combined victory margin was nine-10ths of a second, or perhaps half a ski.

Italy submitted a veteran quartet this year, all four of whom had been victimized at least once by Norway in the last two Olympics. They wanted this race very badly, and they got it, thanks to a virtuoso third leg skied by Pietro Piller Cottrer, who handed over a pretty much insurmountable lead to anchor man Cristian Zorzi.

When the postrace press conference was over, I seized the opportunity to introduce myself to Piller Cottrer, saying I believed I was the only American to have seen all four of these races. I shook his hand and told him he had been ''fantastico."

This is a blatant violation of approved American journalistic ethics, and as a result I will probably never be invited to lecture at the Columbia School of Journalism. But I'll be OK. Nothing harms me. Let others beware. I am Il Becchino.

Bob Ryan is a Globe columnist. His e-mail address is ryan@globe.com