Before the 17th Olympic Winter Games close Sunday and they give the Norwegians their car keys back, these stories deserve to be told (or retold):

THE HUBER BROTHERS: It was all downhill in Lillehammer for Norbert, Gunther, Arnold and Wilfried Huber, four brothers from Brunico, Italy. In what is believed to be an Olympic "brothers first," Wilfried, 23, won a gold medal in luge doubles; Norbert, 29, won a silver medal in luge doubles; Gunther, 28, won a bronze medal in two-man bobsled; and Arnold, 26, finished fourth in luge singles. The Brothers Huber went for the cycle, Olympic version. If they were a country they would be in 12th place in the current overall standings, ahead of Sweden and tied with France. Just exactly what their parents did to raise boys obsessed with sliding downhill fast remains a secret, but it couldn't have been easy.THE WINTER GAMES ALL-NAME HOCKEY TEAM: Bronze: Garth Snow, U.S. goalkeeper - although he should have been a skier. Silver: Marko Palo, Finnish rightwinger - described in the media guide as "an all-around good player." Gold: Miroslav Satan, Slovakian right-winger - no doubt soon to be drafted by the New Jersey Devils.

GOOD START, BAD FINISH DEPT.: Bronze medalist: Tim Tetreault, U.S.A. Tetrault finished 30th in the individual nordic combined competition, jumping with abandon off the 90-meter ski jump and then racing around the woods in the cross-country ski. He was scheduled to compete for the U.S. in the three-man nordic combined team competition but couldn't. After the individual event, he slipped on a patch of ice in downtown Lillehammer and broke his leg.

Silver medalist: Inna Sheshikl, Kazakhstan. Sheshikl was on track to win a medal in the women's 7.5-kilometer biathlon race but she looked up . . . to the finish line . . . just ahead . . . and fell. She scrambled back to her feet, but crossed the line in time only to finish fourth, 3.9 seconds out of the medals.

Gold medalist: Masahiko Harada, Japan. The 25-year-old Harada was the last member of Japan's four-man 120-meter jumping team to jump last Sunday. He needed a jump of just a little over 100 meters to give the Japanese their first gold medal. Since Harada had already gone 122 meters on the first of his two jumps, this was no tall order. But either he thought too long about what it all meant, or he didn't think at all, for on his second jump he dropped to the earth like an American. His jump measured only 97.5 meters. Just like that, the Japanese dropped to a silver medal, and Harada assumed his place in history as the ultimate "anchor man."

COME-AGAIN? QUOTE DEPT.: Even for an Olympic press conference, Diane Rawlinson, Tonya Harding's figure skating coach, set something of a new standard when, after spending more than half an hour intercepting questions asked directly of Harding, was actually asked a question herself. "I better let her answer that. Tonya doesn't like it when I speak for her," Rawlinson said.

STIFF UPPER LIP DEPT.: This editorial appeared this week in the London Daily Telegraph: "We lost to Ireland in rugby at Twickenham on Saturday. Mike Atherton's brief honeymoon has ended at Kingston, Jamaica, with the first real test of cricket against the West Indies. The (soccer) World Cup is now only of academic interest to us. No wonder our eyes turned to Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean at the Winter Olympics.

"Then they lost.

"The English are currently bedeviled by the cruel combination of a huge enthusiasm for sport coupled with an inability to win much."

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COME-AGAIN? PERFORMANCE DEPT. It might have been lost amid the commotion over Norway's other medal performances, and even amid his personal Lille-hammer haul of three gold medal/world record combinations, but in years to come, what Norway's Johann Olav (The Boss) Koss did to the 10,000 meter speed-skating record will no doubt come into clear focus. Koss's clocking of 13:30.55 in the Viking Ship took 12.99 seconds off the previous mark. Bard Veldkamp, the 1992 Olympic champion from Holland who finished second to Voss, put the record in perspective. "I think that's a time that will stand for at least 30 years," said Veldkamp. "It's a race that really is almost impossible."

If Koss had skated against America's Eric Heiden in the 1980 Games at Lake Placid, he would have finished almost a full minute ahead of Heiden - and Heiden's 14:28.13 was a world record.

AND FINALLY, THE PERSISTENCE GOLD MEDAL GOES TO: Maurilio De Zolt, Italy. De Zolt, a cross-country skier, first started coming to the Winter Games 14 years ago, when he was 29 years old. He competed at Lake Placid, at Sarajevo, at Calgary, at Albertville and here in Lillehammer. He got silver medals in 1988 and 1992 in the 50-kilometer race, but the gold medal always eluded him. The relay was especially frustrating. In 1980 the Italians and De Zolt finished sixth, in 1984 seventh, in 1988 fifth. They were second in 1992 but De Zolt was not on the team. Then they put him back on the team for these Games and that's what it took. The Italians improbably beat the Norwegians on their own snow - by four-tenths of a second - and De Zolt hiked to the top step of the medal's podium for the first time of his career.

Afterward the 43-year-old Italian was asked if he'll retire. He didn't say he would and he didn't say he wouldn't. Neither, for that matter, did the Hubers.

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