Interviewer: Now, we get a chance to talk to one of our local heroes, a guy who is back in town helping to open up one of the brand new Ronald McDonald houses, uh, he is an Olympic gold medallist himself, we're talkin' about Apolo Ohno.  Apolo, how are ya man?
Apolo: I'm doin' great, thanks for having me on the show.
Interviewer: Hey we appreciate you hoppin' on dude.  Congratulations on all your success you've had the last few months.
Apolo: [in background] Thank you.
Interviewer: It's gotta be pretty awesome to, uh, to know that, uh, you're a superstar now man, there's no, [Apolo laughs a little in the background] there's no, you know, "who's Apolo Ohno?"  Everybody knows who you are now dude.
Apolo:  I know, thank you, thank you.  It's been definitely a huge whirlwind for me - 180 - but, uh, it feels good.  So I'm just happy to be livin' it up, you know?
Interviewer:  Hey, let me ask you this, how do you handle all that?  You got a lot of people now claiming to be your friends.  You got a lot more people that claim they knew you.  I, uh, how do you go about handling that, going from relative obscurity to now being like Dave said, a superstar, how do you do that?
Apolo:  Hhhh-uuuuh,. slowly, ya know.  The past couple of months I've just been traveling all over so, I haven't really had a chance to even just come back, you know, to Seattle and see all of my friends but, you know hopefully I will have a chance to come back and just kinda have, have fun and have some good times with them, but, you know just lately I've just been runnin' all over the place, just kinda taking things one by one, but just real hectic, you know.  Just reeeeaal crazy.
Interviewer:  Well, you obviously burst onto the scene, uh, you got the cover of Sports Illustrated which, uh, normally is a bad thing, is a jinx, but it turned out pretty well for you.  You won a gold and a silver in Salt Lake City, ah, what's next for you?  Do you, do you go back to train for 2006, uh, you got world championships comin' up?  What do you do next?
Apolo:  Right, actually I've been, um, in Japan for the past week, and uh, just kinda takin' some time for myself and seeing my family with my dad.  And I started doing a little training there so I'm actually starting to get back into training you know.  I took a, a good, a good break after the games, you know, so, starting to get back into, into the mental mindset of training again, and just being in an atmosphere so, um, I got, I usually have 6 international world cups a year...
Interviewer:  Uh-hum.
Apolo:  ...plus world championships and...
Interviewer:  Wow.
Apolo:  ...you know, several other competitions, so I'm traveling all the time, you know, so I got to start getting back in the game, and uh, hopefully you know, I can be, start skating with the top again so. I, I can be ready.
Interviewer:  I wanna ask you about training, a lot of people kind of don't realize how much work goes into it.  They know that you're dedicated and work hard, but can you take us through the typical day of training, let's say leading up before the Olympics what you put your body through to get yourself into shape to, to win the medals you did?
Apolo:  Whhhhoo, awright, uuum. before the games that's probably one of the most intense times of your training, you do a lot of fine tuning but you're also just really, you know, you're really focused, and, um, I get, I would, I would get up, I would skate probably 2 hours in the, in the morning, but I would be there a half-hour earlier, you know, warming - or an hour earlier warming up, and then an hour after warming down and just kinda relaxing.  Then I'd get back, eat, probably take a nap, uh, wake up, probably do another training session from like 1 - 3...
Interviewer:  Mm-hmm.
Apolo:  ...um, get done with that, you know probably eat again,...
Interviewer:  [laughs a little]
Apolo:  ...work on my skates a little bit, train again from about 6 - 8.
Interviewer:  Wow.
Apolo:  ....and then, uh, get a little somethin' to eat and usually, uh, you know I'm either watching tapes, or I'm getting work done on my legs, or I'm in the bed, you know.  So I mean anywhere from, from 4 hours to 8 hours a day is just pure physical work, work sometimes, and you know it gets pretty intense, so.
Interviewer:  Well, I wanna know this, how do you stay in such great shape and how do you skate so fast 'cause you just said that your typical day, I mean you, you just mentioned about 4 or 5 different times during the day when you're eatin' food.
Apolo:   [laughs & starts to try to explain]  I need,
Interviewer:  I mean...
Apolo:  I need, I need that intake, you know.
Interviewer:  Right.
Apolo:  I'm burnin' so much all the time.
Interviewer:  'Cause that sounds like the best part of your day to me [laughs].
Apolo:  Oh, yeah, especially after you go for an hour and a half workout, runnin' hard, you wanna eat, of course.
Interviewer:  Well, you mentioned the international competitions you have going and you know the speed skating, sport of speed skating I guess, i-i-is, is really something that we don't hear a lot about, you know, until the Olympics come around.  Maybe there's a world championship event that one of the networks'll pick up on a Saturday afternoon somewhere, you know here or there, but it, it seems like on an international level there's a lot more passion for your sport than let's say here at home in the States.
Apolo:  Right, I think definitely in the past, you know, it, it hasn't blown up in, in, in the States.  I, I think it's because, there's, you know, th-there hasn't really been any big results.  The media hasn't really caught on and just people weren't really, uh - they didn't know about it.  I think that was the biggest thing and once people started to watch it they, they, uh, kinda understood the sport a little more.  People started really getting more turned on to the sport, you know I think that was a big part of it, so, hopefully, you know, people can really just, just keep their, keep their attention with the sport, I think.  I think it's a great sport - it's the sport that I do, you know - so hopefully, it'll just, it'll keep its value.  Definitely.

Click here for the rest...