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player ready...SUNDAY’S WEATHER
At Utah Olympic Park, it will be sunny with highs in the middle to upper 30s with lows from 15 to 20. At Snowbasin, location of the men’s downhill, there will be patchy morning fog with highs of 15 to 20. Sunday night the temperature will settle between 0 and minus-10.
SUNDAY’S ATHLETE
Tricia Byrnes
Snowboard, U.S.
Tricia Byrnes should be near the top of the standings in the women’s halfpipe snowboard event at Park City. She was the 1999 World Cup halfpipe champion and finished second in 2000. She graduated from Greenwich (Conn.) High School, the same school attended by former NFL player Steve Young.
SUNDAY’S TV
2 p.m.-4 p.m.
NBC: Snowboarding (women’s halfpipe), speedskating (women’s 3,000m)
5 p.m.-11 p.m.
CNBC: Men’s hockey (Austria vs. Germany, Latvia vs. Slovakia)
7 p.m.-10:30 p.m.
NBC: Alpine skiing (men’s downhill), luge (men’s singles), nordic combined (15k cross-country individual), ski jumping (K90 individual), snowboarding (women’s halfpipe final)
11:05 p.m.-11:35 p.m.
NBC: Daily roundup
11:35 p.m.-3 a.m.
NBC: Taped coverage
Midnight-6 a.m.
MSNBC: Taped coverage
WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
Vinko Bogataj
Yugoslavian ski jumper
It is the enduring image of ABC’s “Wide World of Sports.”
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Vinko Bogataj, a 22-year-old from Yugoslavia, hurtles off the ski jump at the 1970 International Ski Flying Championships in West Germany, tumbling head over skis and landing with a thud. It is always accompanied by an announcer’s voice saying ” . . . and the agony of defeat.”
Jim McKay, who is working for NBC at the Olympics, has always said that the most-asked question of him is: What ever happened to the hapless skier?
Bogataj is alive and well and living in Lesce, Slovenia. He is the father of Monica and Sandra and the husband of Lilijana. After working in a foundry for much of his life, Bogataj, who turns 54 next month, owns a truck and delivers manufacturing equipment. He also paints oil and watercolor landscapes that are good enough to be sold in town.
This information comes courtesy of Monica, his oldest daughter at 28. Since he doesn’t speak English so well, Monica was happy to tell of her father’s life.
“He is not so famous in Slovenia,” Monica said, “but in America it is a completely different story. My father found out that he was famous.”
Monica traveled in the U.S. in 1998 and, if someone found out she was the daughter of the “Agony of Defeat” guy, “they wanted to talk to me. They want to know if my dad was hurt.”
Her dad was hurt, though mostly just bumps and bruises. And he still does some ski jumping “for fun,” she said.