Germany Survives a Crash

It looked like the U.S. women were bound for the gold-medal race Saturday in the team pursuit when the last skater for Germany, their semifinal foe, crashed to the ice on the final curve.
The fallen skater, Anna Friesinger-Postma, slid toward the finish on her belly, moving her arms and legs as if she was dong the breaststroke. After spinning across the line, she pounded her fist on the ice in frustration and then lay unmoving. When at last she looked at the scoreboard, Friesinger-Postma thrust her left arm in the air.
Somehow she had crossed the finish line 0.23 seconds before the last American, Nancy Swider Peltz Jr. “Anni’s fall gave usthe courage to go on,” said Friesinger-Postma’s teammate Daniela Anschutz Thomas after the Germans defeated Japan in the final to win their second consecutive Olympic title.
“My feelings are up and down,” said Friesinger-Postma, who sat out the final. “It was like a carousel. I nearly messed up.”
Asked what was going through her mind as she fell, Friesinger-Postma said: “Oh no. Oh no. No. No. I thought I messed up for the team.”
The U.S. women, substituting Catherine Raney-Norman for Swider Peltz Jr., lost to Poland in the bronze-medal race to finish fourth. “At least we had our shot,” Jennifer Rodriguez said afterward.