Ohno's long, icy road

With Ohno often training on his own with his own coaches in the past, some of the younger skaters on the national team have not had the benefit of learning from the best.

"He's the strongest athlete in the world in speedskating," Ryan Leveille, also a member of the long track team, said. "Nobody is as strong as him. So just having him on the same ice, you learn by skating with him ... everybody wants to beat Apolo."

They also want to pick his brain and learn the tricks of the trade.

It's those tricks Ohno wants to work on for the next 12 to16 months. While winning is the primary goal, scouting his opponents is also high on Ohno's priority list.

Calling short track speedskating a chess game featuring attacks, counterattacks and winning moves, Ohno said he hopes to use this World Cup season to learn the best way to beat the Koreans, Canadians and anyone else the world lines up against him.

"It's a very strange sport," he said. "We work so hard, for so long, on a very small thing. All so we can be in position to make the right move at the right time."

Being in Utah, living near the oval and having the national coaches and team to use as resources has Ohno excited to see what he can do in a full season after jumping into the 2007-08 season only after his "Dancing With the Stars" obligations were over.

"It's the first time I was able to train in a long time," Ohno said. "There is no offseason, essentially. I trained hard."

The crowds at the Utah Olympic Oval will certainly be cheering loudly for Ohno. The fan club he's garnered over the years as a skater and dancer are as visible as they are audible and they will probably be out in force this weekend.

It might be one of few opportunities to see him before he finally hangs his golden skates up for good.

"As much as I love the sport, there has to be a time when I've got to walk away," Ohno said. "It'd be nice if I could live in this fairy-tale land where I can skate and be 21 years old forever and be in great shape and never have an injury. But that's not life."

Serious consideration to retirement, however, will have to wait.

Vancouver, he says, is all that matters for the next 16 months.

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E-mail: jeborn@desnews.com