Austria make the right and wrong 2006 headlines (Feature)

By John Bagratuni Jan 27, 2010, 5:06 GMT

Hamburg - Austria dominated the positive and negative headlines with a record medal haul and an unprecedented police raid on some of its athletes and officials at the last Winter Olympics four years ago in Turin.

The presence of a disgraced coach at the team quarters of the cross-country skiers and biathletes prompted the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to seek help from the Italian authorities as the fight against doping reached a new level.

Athletes and coaches fled the host country and were kicked out of the Games as blood doping equipment was seized. The IOC later imposed several life bans and withheld 1 million dollars in funds from the Austrian Olympic Committee, after originally threatening to ban Austria from the 2010 Games.

The Austrians will now be able to compete in Vancouver, but the proud winter sport nation faces an uphill battle to match their record haul of nine gold, seven silver and seven bronze from Turin.

Alpine skiers Benjamin Raich and Michaela Dorfmeister, ski-jumper Thomas Morgenstern and Nordic combined skier Felix Gottwald were double gold medallists for Austria in 2006.

However, Germany topped the overall medal table with an 11-12-6 medal haul from the US (9-9-7), while South Korean short-track speed skater Ahn Hyun-Soo was the most successful athlete with three golds and one silver.

Compatriot skater Jin Sun-Yu and German biathlete Michael Greis had three golds each, while Canadian speed skater Cindy Klassen got the most medals: one gold, two silvers and two bronze.

In the showcase events, Frenchman Antoine Deneriaz surprised with men's downhill gold and so did Japan's Shizuka Arakawa in women's figure skating. But the men's event at least saw a predictable winner in Russian Evgeny Plushenko.

There was no true superstar at the Games and their motto 'Passion lives here' was difficult to find even though IOC boss Jacques Rogge declared them to be 'truly magnificent' in his final verdict.

'The athletes are happy. They were definitely Games that pleased the athletes,' said Rogge.

However, many of them found themselves at the centre of a series of spectacular crashes and failures in Turin and the mountain cluster around Sestriere.

Battered by injuries, bad luck and extraordinary incidents such as biathlete Gunn Margit Andreasson aiming at the wrong targets, Norway crashed from a leading 13 golds in 2002 to just two in 2006, its worst showing since getting no gold at all in Calgary 1988.

Ole Einar Bjoerndalen left without a gold after sweeping all four events in Salt Lake City four years earlier. A bronchitis and stomach bug in the cross-country team stopped the likes of Marit Bjoergen who was tipped to get at least one gold.

Fancied American skier Bode Miller left empty-handed like the US and Canadian NHL ice hockey stars and Finnish Nordic combined skier Hannu Manninen.

Italian ice dancers Barbara Fusar-Poli and Maurizio Margaglio exchanged frosty stares after an original dance disaster and American snowboarder Lindsey Jacobellis threw away a certain gold when she crashed after showing off on the penultimate jump.