PROVO -- With almost two years yet to go, most people don't know if they're going to be in the Olympics when they come to Utah. There are races still to run, rivals to overcome, trials to survive.

But Russell Anderson already knows.He will be in the Olympics for sure.

And right in the middle at that.

Russell will drive the Zamboni.

Zambonis have been hypnotizing the world for half-a-century now. Just why they hold such a fascination, who's to say, but ever since Frank Zamboni invented and developed a machine to scrape the ice in his ice-skating rink in Paramount, Calif., just after the Second World War, people have been gawking trance-like at the swooping, figure-eight patterns made by the odd-looking tractor.

Eventually, they'll say, "Hey, I'd like to drive that!"

Or the Canadian variation: "I'd like to drive that, eh!"

"It is therapeutic," Anderson admitted last week at the Provo Ice Sheet, which will host women's ice hockey during the Salt Lake Winter Games of 2002. "When I'm out there on the ice, I forget about everything."

Sometimes he takes his kids with him and they fall asleep. Most of the time he drives solo.

Just him and the Zamboni and life is beautiful.

Russell also answers to "Zam Man."

His other car is a Saturn.

Proof of the wide-ranging and universal -- if largely unexplained -- appeal of the Zamboni has been exhibited this winter by the Salt Lake Organizing Committee's Olympic fantasy camps.

For a fee, would-be Olympians can put themselves through the paces in intensive camps that approximate Olympic training and are under the direction of genuine Olympians.

SLOC offered the camps in bobsled, aerials, skeleton and Zamboni driving.

Guess which one needed extra sessions?

Guess which one attracted film crews from most of the national television networks as well as CBC from Canada and the BBC from England?

That's right. The one conducted by the Zam Man.

I was fortunate enough to be a part of the last Zamboni Fantasy Camp of the year last week in Provo.

At Russ Anderson's feet, my co-fantasy campers and I learned about the intricacies of ice making, about the need to avoid the dreaded "wave" effect, about how not to make gaps in your pattern called "bananas," about the inner-workings of the Zamboni ice resurfacing machine that pumps hot water onto the ice to produce a solid, cohesive sheet of ice.

We learned that in this business, "You're only as good as your last sheet of ice."

We learned that an ice sheet is typically about two inches thick.

We were told that speed skaters like hard ice and hockey players like any ice that helps them put the puck in the net.

And for 12 glorious minutes and 10 trips up and down the ice, I cut figure eights as I personally Zammed the rink.

It was a fantasy camp, so I went ahead and fantasized that I was at the old Boston Garden, working the ice between periods of a Bruins game as 17,000 rabid Bruin fans watched my flawless circles, their three-dollar beers clutched motionless in their fists.

All of them thinking the same thing: "Man, I'd like to drive the Zamboni."

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Russell was as gracious as he was a good teacher.

"You've done this before, haven't you?" he said, being nice.

"Nah," I answered, "only in my dreams."

Lee Benson's column runs Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Please send e-mail to benson@desnews.com and faxes to 801-237-2527.

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