brittnydx - The Schools That Rule the Games

We know which countries produce the most Winter Olympic medals. But which colleges produce the most Olympians?

View Full Image

John Quackenbos

Patrick Biggs competing for Dartmouth in 2003.

Vancouver is lousy with Wisconsin Badgers, Minnesota Golden Gophers and other Big Tenners?at least 34. Wisconsin has at least a dozen current and former athletes at the Games, and Minnesota another six, because of their powerful ice-hockey programs. Michigan has six too, thanks to first-rate figure-skating coaching nearby.

Dartmouth, whose century-old ski program is believed to be the first of its kind, is well represented as always. The Big Green has at least nine Olympians, including cross-country skier Tucker Murphy, Bermuda's flag bearer. But more than frigid schools are represented.

Bobsledder Chuck Berkeley ran track at California. Rachael Flatt, the 17-year-old American figure skater, has been accepted at Stanford. Some of theses athletes played a sport in college but didn't take up their Olympic sport until later. Curt Tomasevicz was a linebacker at Nebraska before joining the U.S. bobsled team.

The Collegiate Olympians

Here's an estimate of which colleges and universities around the world have produced the most Winter Olympians this year. The numbers are based on information from schools and coaches, and athlete profiles posted on the Vancouver 2010 Web site.

1. University of Calgary (Canada): 23

2. University of Minnesota Duluth: 15

3. Matej Bel University (Slovakia): 14

4. Westminster College (Utah): 14

5. University of Wisconsin: 12

6. Academy of Physical Education (Poland): 11

7. Dartmouth College: 9

7. IUT Annecy (France): 9

7. University of Utah: 9

10. Lviv State University of Physical Culture (Ukraine): 8

10. National Sports Academy (Bulgaria): 8

10. Ural State University of Physical Culture (Russia): 8

13. National University of Physical Culture and Sport (Ukraine): 7

14. University of Minnesota: 6

14. Comenius University (Slovakia): 6

14. University of Michigan: 6

17. Colorado Mountain College: 5

17. Harvard University: 5

17. Latvian Academy of Sport Education (Latvia): 5

17. Ohio State University: 5

Westminster College, a private school of roughly 2,000 undergraduates in Salt Lake City (site of the 2002 Games), has 14 students at the Olympics, including moguls bronze medalist Bryon Wilson. The University of Minnesota Duluth has somehow become intertwined with Swedish women's hockey despite being 4,000 miles away. UMD counts six players on Sweden's team.

When it comes to foreign colleges, the University of Calgary is the gold medalist. The Western Canadian school?which benefits from its proximity to the Olympic Oval, a world-class speed-skating facility?has at least 20 current or former athletes in this year's Games. Austria's University of Innsbruck, which is near world-class ski slopes and bobsled runs, has at least six Olympians this year?a typical haul for the school, which helps athletes by adjusting classroom requirements and test dates to fit their schedules. The school has so many Olympians, it doesn't keep count. "We can't keep track of just the athletes," says Uwe Steger, a university spokesman.

Many prominent Winter Olympians have had colleges listed on their r?sum?s. Figure skater Peggy Fleming, who won gold in 1968, attended Colorado College. Georgia football tailback Herschel Walker pushed a bobsled in 1992.

It's impossible to know how many Olympians have college connections?or to figure out precisely how many went to any given school. There are some 2,600 athletes in this Olympics, and no one has made a comprehensive study of all of their biographies. The primary source for our estimates was the biographies provided to the Vancouver organizing committee, which can be seen on its Web site. When possible, we talked to the schools themselves and some coaches to verify our totals. Some schools' figures differed from the ones we calculated from the Vancouver Web site. The site suggests Minnesota Duluth has 12 Olympians, but the school's women's hockey coach says she has 14 current and former players participating.

View Full Image

Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Charlie White and Meryl Davis, of the University of Michigan, compete for the U.S. in the ice-dancing free program this week.

The numbers do make broader points. For one, college attendance isn't a must for the winter games. Most events?like luge and ice dancing?don't exist at the national collegiate level, so schools often contribute little to athletes' development.

Some athletes feel they can't attend college because of the time their training demands. "I really commend the people that can do both," says former U.S. figure skater Tim Goebel, who won a bronze at the 2002 Salt Lake City Games. While training, he went to school full-time at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland?an arrangement that lasted all of one semester.

"It was impossible," he says.

College hockey is flush with Olympians, particularly at Minnesota Duluth, a branch of the University of Minnesota system. UMD, which stresses foreign recruiting, has 14 current and former women's hockey players in the Vancouver Games, including the Sweden six and three on Finland's team.

View Full Image

NCAA Photos/Associated Press

Erika Holst while at the University of Minnesota Duluth in 2001.

"Stones were thrown initially," UMD coach Shannon Miller says of the reaction to her recruiting foreign students, which helped the Bulldogs win four national titles between 2001 and 2008. "Then people stopped throwing stones and got on the plane and started recruiting."

As Team Canada's coach at the 1998 Nagano Olympics, she had compiled a bunch of notes on players from other countries. When UMD hired her in 1998, she relied on that knowledge to recruit foreigners to the school's nascent program.

Although other countries didn't (and don't) have nearly as many good players as the U.S. and Canada, there were some worth grabbing. Maria Rooth was UMD's first from Sweden; Erika Holst followed. When they returned home, other players noticed their development?and started looking at UMD.

Michigan counts four ice dancers in Vancouver, including silver medalists Meryl Davis and Charlie White. "They didn't get mobbed too often before they left," says Michigan senior Emily Hammond, a member of the Michigan Figure Skating Club, "but they will when they get back."

?David Crawford and Ben Cohen contributed to this article.

Write to Darren Everson at darren.everson@wsj.com and David Biderman at David.Biderman@wsj.com
Online.wsj.com

Source: http://brittnydx.livejournal.com/76566.html

robert quinn victoria beckham prince william and kate crystal bowersox cleveland browns