Winter Olympics: Apolo Ohno is the sort of person you don't expect to like. Too much dude in him. Long hair and a little smig which looks like it's been stolen from somebody's genitalia.  Tom Humphries in Salt Lake City

Better looking than anyone with talent has a right to be. Then there's that kooky celestial name plus a biography that kind of gets under your skin. Afraid to travel anywhere after September 11th when, of course, we all feared for the safety of short track speed skaters.

Totally cracked under pressure at the US Olympic trials four years ago. Accused, wrongly it turned out, last December of being involved in a race-fixing scam. All that and a poster boy for the raucous American media who beat the drum all the way to Salt Lake City talking up Apolo's drive for four golds. No thanks.

So, on Saturday night, as we watched the men's 1,000-metre short track final in a state of sublime ignorance, all we knew (well okay, all I knew) was that it would be pretty amusing if Apolo the raging favourite were to be beaten and everybody had to shut up about him.

And lo it came to pass in circumstances so dramatic that it will be popping up on the What Happened Next segment of sports quiz programmes for decades to come.

The five-man field came around the last bend with Apolo Ohno in front, holding off Li Jiajun of China and with Mathieu Turcotte of Canada and South Korea's Kim Dong-Sung in pursuit. Steve Bradbury of Australia was dead last, skating a different race apparently.

Then Li Jiajun took a tumble. And the front four fell like dominoes. Swoosh! Scrape! Slide! The crowd was in sudden uproar. With a big sheepish grin on his face Steve Bradbury slid unmolested over the finish line and won Australia's first ever winter Olympics gold medal.

Well here goes, we thought setting our tape machines to long-play for the beginning of the sort of double album, gatefold sleeve whine which Mary Decker Slaney produced when Zola Budd tripped her up back in 1984. Hit us with your moaniest shot pretty boy.

As we waited for word from Apolo we looked at the slow motion tapes of the race which NBC were showing over and over again. The crowd in the Ice Centre booed solidly, encouraged perhaps by the new Olympic tendency to hand gold medals out to crowd favourites.

Looking at the replays you had to admit that the kid did pretty well to bounce off the wall with a six-inch gash in his leg and stick his skate out for a silver medal, but the sight of him being tended to and pampered by half the American Olympic community afterwards rubbed that generous thought out.

Apolo is in a wheelchair they said. Give us a break we said. He may be able to manage with crutches they said. Oh Boo hoo we said. And damnit the kid came and he spoke and he conquered and he reminded a few of us just what the Olympics are supposed to be all about.

"Is this a scandal or is it just the sport?" he was asked.

"Hey, it's just the sport," he said.

And the rest of his words were an outburst of generosity and decency which we thought had no place in modern Olympics anymore. Turns out that Steve Bradbury the bleach haired Aussie who found the gold dropping into his lap, makes Apolo's skates. The pair of them had been e-mailing each other best wishes on the night before the race.

"Yeah, it's a wonderful opportunity for Steve and I congratulate him. He's the guy that makes my skates. Last night he sent me an e-mail saying: "Apolo, if you win tomorrow be sure to give a shout out." And on he went happy as a lark as we picked away for a little piece of bitterness.

"Whose fault was it?"

"I have no idea. I still have got to look at the tape. This is short track. It was out of my control."

"What about those four gold medals?"

"My quest, my journey, is not about winning four golds. It's about coming to the Olympics and experiencing it and enjoying it and performing my best regardless of the medal outcome.

"In fact, I thought it was one of the best efforts of my life. I was definitely happy with the performance, regardless of what medal I have."

Bradbury, one of speed skating's journeymen, has a cv filled with lower rankings and was thrilled to have made the final. In fact, he was thrilled to be alive. In 1994, after an accident, he lost four litres of blood. Two years ago in another accident he broke his neck.

Those are the second and third most strange anecdotes he will be telling his grandchildren. He got through the quarter-final stage when two of the skaters in front of him went down. In the semi-finals, same story. In the finals? Ditto!

"Obviously," he said with a grin, "I'm not the fastest skater but those were my tactics. Luck was on my side. I won't take the medal for the minute and a half of a race that I won.

"I'll take it and think of it as something for the last decade of hard slog. I was the weakest guy in that field. Everyone went down and I'm the winner. That's just unbelievable to have everybody to down like that.

"But I'll take it. It's good but it doesn't feel right you know. I wasn't as strong as the other guys. I consider myself the luckiest man. God smiles on you some days and this is my day."

And off they all went. Apolo Ohno wheeled out but vowing he'd be alright for the next three medal attempts. Steve Turcotte the third-placed Canadian with a cut on his backside, grinning and saying he'd be back too and Bradbury the man who won the lottery.

Made fans out of us again, so it did.