Ohno a model of health

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Saturday, July 17, 2004

Ohno a model of health

By JOHN LEVESQUE
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST

Seattle's Apolo Anton Ohno has never done the Group Health STP Bicycle Classic organized by the Cascade Bicycle Club. He has friends who have made the trip and tried to persuade him to take part. But he's usually in training.

Besides, if he ever finds the time, he'll probably finish the two-day, 200-mile ride from Seattle to Portland before lunch. On the first day.

Earlier this week, Ohno called from the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colo., where preparing for the 2006 Winter Olympics is his full-time job, though he also takes college courses online in his "spare" time.

He said he had just finished a bicycle time trial at 6,400 feet elevation.

"It was tough," he said.

Though America knows him as an ice skater, Ohno does a lot of dry-land training, especially on a bicycle, because cycling is a low-impact sport. Some days he'll do 60 miles, which may explain why his favorite book is Lance Armstrong's "It's Not About the Bike."

Twenty-nine months after becoming a dual medalist and consensus heartthrob at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Ohno takes nothing for granted. Short-track speed skating has exploded, he said, with more athletes from more countries entering the zany sport every day.

Despite his gold and silver at Salt Lake City, a first place in overall World Cup standings last year and a third place this year, Ohno knows 2006 in Turin, Italy, will be a severe test.

And so he trains relentlessly, on the ice, on land, in the weight room. A typical day starts with ice work from 7:30 to 11 a.m. After a lunch of salad, tuna, cottage cheese and fresh vegetables, he'll hit the weights. Then a sauna, a rubdown and some free time in the afternoon (for homework, working on skate blades and such). A third workout, generally off the ice, comes in the late afternoon or early evening, depending on whether he chooses to do it before or after dinner.

Ohno usually has Sundays off, but he said he still gets in a run or a bike ride. It's a life of commitment, denial -- he loves to eat but keeps to a strict diet -- and repetition.

And he loves it.

"I still feel great," he said. "I've been blessed to stay healthy."

To preach what he practices, Ohno has shot two commercials for Group Health urging people to exercise vigorously at least three times a week. Each spot features Ohno exercising with a Group Health physician, the point being you don't have to be an Olympic champion to enjoy the benefits of regular exercise.

The commercials start running tomorrow on KING/5, KONG/6, 16 and NorthWest Cable News in the Seattle area, and are scheduled to continue through the Summer Olympics in August. They are not the most polished pieces of advertising ever foisted on the viewing public, but the low-budget feel is no fault of Ohno's. He does his part -- riding a bike and gliding on in-line skates -- flawlessly.

If more commercials are in the future, Group Health might want to give Ohno a speaking role. At 22, he has fledged into a thoughtful, articulate speaker with plenty to say. Ohno said he'd welcome the chance.

"We both have similar goals," he said, "and we're very focused on what we want to achieve."

In the short term for Ohno, that would be success at the 2006 Games, and maybe even 2010 in Vancouver, B.C.

"If I'm healthy and still have the love I have for training and pursuing my goals," he said, "I might be there."

Much of the appeal of the Vancouver Games is their proximity to Seattle. But Ohno will be 27 in the winter of 2010, a veritable eminence grise by short-track standards. Even he said a short-track skater probably peaks at 25, though many are out of the sport at 22 or 23.

"I would be a veteran," he acknowledged, "but by then I could bring my old-man strengths. Experience plays a huge role."

Ohno said he has been energized this summer watching the Olympic qualifying trials in swimming and track and field, but also by the Tour de France, perhaps because champion cyclists such as Armstrong compete well into their 30s.

"A lot of those guys hang around for a long time," said Ohno, who was a state champion in swimming and a national champion in in-line skating before he switched to short-track skating as a teenager.

So don't be surprised if Ohno never makes it to the STP Bicycle Classic. It's held every year at the same time as the Tour de France.

P-I columnist John Levesque can be reached at 206-448-8330 or johnlevesque@seattlepi.com