WORLD SPORTS SCENE / RANDY HARVEY : Hockey Arena Is a Real Hole in the Wall

Rome has the Colosseum. London has Wembley. Houston has the Astrodome.

Now, the village of Gjovik, Norway, is about the contribute to the sports architecture hall of fame with Fjellhall, or Mountain Hall, an ice hockey arena tunneled into a hillside.

Constructed as the secondary ice-hockey venue for February’s Winter Olympics, it will open this week with an invitational tournament involving the United States, Russia, Canada, France, Slovakia and Norway.

The project director, Tore Bjorke, told U.S. reporters on a tour of Olympic sites recently that 29,000 truckloads of granite were removed from Hovdetoppen Mountain to create the tunnel, which also can serve as a civil-defense shelter.

“Geologists have said that this venue is so safe that hockey players can play here without helmets,” he said. “And, you know, when Saddam Hussein, or somebody like that, comes knocking with nuclear weapons, we can close the doors to keep him out. And have a hockey game, too.”

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Q: What do Norwegians call the restaurant inside Mountain Hall?

A: The hard rock cafe.

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Tickets for Olympic cross-country skiing events in Lillehammer are so much in demand that the 31,000-seat Birkebeiner Stadium could have been sold out six times over.

Even hotter are tickets for speedskating in nearby Hamar. The waiting list for seats in the 12,000-seat arena has gone over 200,000.

The least coveted ticket, however, is for figure skating, which is the most popular Winter Olympic sport virtually everywhere except Scandanavia.

For the women’s freestyle skating program in the recent Piruetten competition in Hamar’s 6,000-seat arena, about 150 people watched. “We needed a laugh track,” said Verne Lundquist, who called the event for CBS.

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The U.S. Figure Skating Assn. was relieved when Nancy Kerrigan won the Piruetten women’s competition over a field that included 1993 world silver medalist Surya Bonaly of France and bronze medalist Lu Chen of China. Unable to overcome her nerves last year after finishing third in the 1992 Winter Games, Kerrigan did not appear to be a cinch for the awards stand in Norway next February. But she apparently has benefited from regular visits to a sports psychologist.

The Costa Mesa pairs team of Jenni Meno and Todd Sand, who did not compete last month at Skate America in their only previously scheduled international competition before the Jan. 4-10 nationals because of his back spasms, has been added to the field for this week’s Trophee Lalique in Paris.

Lalique organizers also invited 1984 gold-medalist Scott Hamilton, who declined. He regained his eligibility this year but has not committed to a return to Olympic-style competition.

He, however, will be among competitors at the Sports Arena on April 7-8, when the Hershey’s Kisses Pro-Am returns. He finished second this year. The man who beat him, Brian Boitano, also has committed, as have Kerrigan and Paul Wylie.

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Producers of “Cool Runnings” are correct when they advertise that their movie about the Jamaican four-man bobsled team in the 1988 Winter Olympics was “inspired by a true story.” That, however, does not mean that what we see on the screen is a true story.

In the movie, the Jamaicans recovered from a poor first run with a second run that vaulted them to eighth place. But their hopes for a medal were dashed when they crashed on the third run due to an equipment malfunction, after which they valiantly carried their sled across the finish line.

Now, SportsLetter, published by the Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles, reports the facts:

“The Jamaicans had a poor first run. They also had a poor second run, finishing 24th of 26th. In the third run, they crashed badly. The cause was driver error, not equipment failure. And the team didn’t carry the sled across the finish line; they slid to the finish in their overturned sled, and race officials pushed it up the outrun.”

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More bobsled facts: U.S. two-man teams plan to use sleds this winter designed by NASCAR driver Geoff Bodine, who spent $130,000 out of his own pocket on the project. One sled, driven by 1993 World Cup champion Brian Shimer, recently broke the track record during a test run in Lillehammer. But Shimer and brakeman Randy Jones finished 10th in the sled in this season’s opening World Cup race in Koenigsee, Germany. “There are still some small glitches,” U.S. Coach Joey Kilburn said.

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Before the 1992 Winter Olympics, some members of the U.S. biathlon team, apparently fearing they would be besieged by the media, put out the word that they wouldn’t do interviews. No one had the heart to tell them that there was about as much chance of that as there is that Chernobyl will be besieged by tourists.

But another group of U.S. athletes that seldom makes headlines, the luge team, has had to flee for cover after the attack on five of them by neo-Nazi skinheads in a German bar.

“Not a half hour would go by” without a reporter calling for an interview, said Ron Rossi, executive director of the U.S. Luge Assn., explaining the team’s move from its training camp in Austria to Latvia, where the telephone service is not as efficient.

“They recognize the obligation” of speaking to reporters,” Rossi said. “But I can tell you they are glad to be in Latvia right now.”