What people are talking about in the Olympic world

1) Shaun White Soars

	X-Games snowboarding stud Shaun White closed in on an Olympic berth in Colorado. Brian Bahr/Getty Images
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The X-Games star won back-to-back halfpipe events to all but wrap up a U.S. Olympic berth in the first week of qualifying. The 19-year-old White (dubbed "the Flying Tomato" for his long, red hair) is both a snowboarder and a skateboarder, and has been an extreme-sports icon virtually since grade school. His resounding triumphs in Breckenridge, Colo., last week left a pack of world-class rivals -- including Salt Lake City medalists Ross Powers and Danny Kass -- to fight it out for the remaining two U.S. Olympic berths at a pair of Grand Prix competitions in Oregon and New Jersey in January.

2) Shani Comes Up Short

The historic quest ended ingloriously, with a fall to the ice in a semifinal of the 1,000 meters. Shani Davis had hoped to win gold medals in short-track and long-track speedskating -- two utterly different sports -- but at last week's short-track nationals in Marquette, Mich., he failed to qualify for the U.S. team. The silver lining: The Chicago native can now concentrate on long-track, in which he's better anyway, and improve his chances of winning gold in that.

3) Hyo Jung Comes Up Big

At those same short-track trials, 17-year-old Hyo Jung Kim announced herself as a potential U.S. star of the future. She far outdistanced her female competitors in the point standings and brought to fruition a dream she had nurtured since moving to the U.S. almost two years ago from Seoul, where she was born and spent most of her childhood. South Korea is the world's most fervid short-track skating nation, and Kim (who, like her father, has dual citizenship) gives the U.S. team not only a talented skater but also an infusion of Korea's intense work ethic.

4) Hockey Rosters Announced

Is there a Miracle in the 23-man U.S. men's team named on Monday night? The NHL certainly wouldn't mind. But even with an influx of young talent, the American side will be a clear underdog against such potent teams as Canada, Russia and the Czech Republic. Wait -- isn't that how Miracles start?

5) U.S. Women Skiers Rebound

After a bleak week on home snow in Aspen, Lindsey Kildow and Caroline Lalive went to Val d'Isere, France, and gave the U.S. its first one-two finish in a World Cup downhill in more than a decade. It was enough to make American ski fans stop worrying -- at least for a few days -- about Bode Miller's less-than-dominating performances so far on the European circuit.

6) Hays Making Hay

Could the U.S. be looking at its first Olympic gold medal in men's bobsledding since 1948? Hard-driving Texan Todd Hays, silver medalist in the four-man event in '02, had another stellar weekend, winning a four-man race and finishing second in a two-man event in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy (site of the 1956 Olympics, if that's a good omen). Hays, a onetime University of Tulsa linebacker and national kickboxing champion, now leads the World Cup two-man standings and is fourth in four-man.

7) Hannah and Hannah

A pair of Vermont teenagers did the Green Mountain State proud last week. Hannah Teter, 18, a former world junior halfpipe champion from Belmont (and co-star of the new snowboarding documentary First Descent), won the opening U.S. Grand Prix halfpipe in Breckenridge. Hannah Kearney, 19, the 2005 world moguls skiing champion from Norwich, won a World Cup event in Tignes, France. Don't be surprised if two medals in Turin bear the label "Vermont-made."

8) Sudden-Death Luge

This is Olympic pressure. On Wednesday two singles lugers will face off, as will two double teams, in best-of-three duels in Lake Placid, N.Y., to decide who earns the final slots on the U.S. team. Among the win-or-go-home sliders is Patrick Quinn, 39, who switched to luge after failed attempts to make the U.S. team in speedskating. If he loses, he still could go to the Games: He's the agent for several U.S. Olympians, including medal-winning speedskaters Jennifer Rodriguez and Derek Parra.

9) Too Young for Turin

If Japanese phenom Mao Asada were three months older, she might be the gold-medal pick in women's figure skating. Instead, she will have to watch the Turin Games as a spectator. Mao needed to turn 15 by last July 1 to be Olympic-eligible; her birthday is Sept. 25. For this season she will have to satisfy herself with major non-Olympic victories, such as her triumph last week at the ISU Grand Prix final in Tokyo, where she ended world champion (and Turin favorite) Irina Slutskaya's nearly two-year winning streak.

10) Smooth Sailing

It's December. It's freezing. You need a break from all these Winter Olympic stories. So let your imagination take you to balmy Brazil, where 18-year-old Paige Railey of Clearwater, Fla., just won the Laser Radial Women's World Championship, her sixth major international title of the year. Laser Radial is the class of singlehanded dinghy in which women's sailors will compete at the Beijing Olympics, so Railey, a freshman at the University of South Florida, is in a pretty good place. And a pretty, warm place.