SALT LAKE CITY -- Short-track speedskater Apolo Anton Ohno is only 5-feet-7. But because he is the best in the world, he throws a shadow that's as tall as Michael Jordan.

Rusty Smith sits in the cool darkness of that shadow, smiling softly, enjoying the peace and quietly making his own mark on the ice.

Even though speedskating is mainly an individual, not a team, sport, Smith plays Scottie Pippen to Ohno's Jordan -- a good competitor overshadowed by one of the best ever.

"He gets a lot of attention, but he deserves a lot of attention because he's skating really well," Smith said. "The last thing I would want for our sport is not to grow because I didn't want him to get all the attention. It's kind of nice for me. I don't have to have the media on top of me all the time."

During the U.S. Olympic trials last week, Ohno and Smith, a 1998 Olympian, were the only two skaters who qualified in every Olympic event (500 meters, 1,000, 1,500 and 5,000 relay) for the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics, Feb. 8-24. At the trials, Smith (4,181 points) finished second overall to Ohno (7,286 points), who easily won seven of the eight races. Smith, who was battling a terrible cold all week, finished second in five of those races and third in the other three.

	Numbers
	42 Days until the Opening Ceremony for the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics. 48.5 The Nielsen television rating for the ladies short program pitting Nancy Kerrigan against Tonya Harding at the 1994 Lillehammer Games. Today, it still ranks sixth among most-watched U.S. broadcasts.

Last year, Ohno ripped through the short-track world, winning World Cup titles in all three individual Olympic events as well as the overall World Cup title. He finished second overall at the 2001 World Championships, and Smith finished eighth -- a finish that would be very impressive, if Ohno, a 19-year-old phenom, weren't in the picture.

"Every time (the media) look at him, they expect him to win, but he's handling it all really well," Smith said. "That might be a little more difficult for me. I'm kind of fortunate in that I have somebody else to take a little bit of the pressure off me, and I do my part every once in awhile to pull the pressure off him."

Smith (Sunset Beach, Calif.) has been a member of the U.S. national team for five years and spends about nine months of every year in Colorado Springs, where the team is based. At the 1998 Nagano Olympics, his highest finish was 13th in the 1,000.

Smith and Ohno are both members of the 5,000-meter relay team that won last season's World Championships gold medal, the first for the U.S. since 1976.

"I'd much rather have Apolo on my team than not, because if he wasn't, I'd have to skate against him in four events like everybody else in the world, instead of just three," said Smith, 22. "Plus, I get to train with him every day, while (other countries) wonder what he's doing, what we're doing. We challenge each other every day. That's how we've both gotten to be among the top five in the world."

First but not the last?
He is the first. But now that short-track racer Shani Davis has become the first black to qualify for the U.S. Olympic speedskating team, Fred Benjamin hopes the 19-year-old is the first of many to come.

Will Davis be a Pied Piper for his sport?

"The first thing that came to my mind was that I hoped that other members of the African-American community see this as another alternative to sport," said Benjamin, the president of U.S. Speedskating. Davis' mother once worked as Benjamin's secretary and suggested Shani try speedskating.

"So many people aren't even aware of this sport," Benjamin said. "It's like a secret."

The funny thing about Benjamin's statement is that Davis, who grew up in Chicago, skated at clubs in Evanston, Ill., where all the other skaters also were black.

"I thought speedskating was a black sport," Davis said.

Short-track speedskating -- it's a cross between demolition derby and roller derby -- became an Olympic sport at the 1994 Lillehammer Olympics.

Notes
Russian figure skater Irina Slutskaya knows going into the Salt Lake Olympics she is one half of the Games' hottest rivalry. But on the surface, she is calm and smiling, warm and funny, seemingly without a care in the world.

"I look like (that), but I'm not," she said, her English charmingly fractured. "Everyone is interested in me and Michelle (Kwan). It may look like I'm waving my arms, like I don't care, well, like I'm just relaxed. But, of course, I am nervous like everyone else."

Thursday, she edged former world champion Maria Butyrskaya in the short program at the Russian national championships.

Some months ago, Slutskaya started working with a sports psychologist, Anatoly Alexeev, and she credits her ability to handle the stress of this Olympic year to her work with him.

"My Irina stays inside of me now," she said.

Two weeks ago, Slutskaya edged Kwan and Sarah Hughes to win the Grand Prix Final, the last time all three will face each other until the Olympics.

Meanwhile, the Russian men's short program Thursday was a snoozer. Without former three-time world champion Alexei Yagudin, who withdrew because of injury, it was a cakewalk into first place for reigning world champion Evgeni Plushenko, who opened with a breathtaking quad-triple combination jump.

He has toned down his metallic costumes considerably from the Grand Prix Final, dressing instead in somber black and silver.

"It's a normal costume -- more or less," he said.