WHISTLER, British Columbia &#8212 Joe Biden snaked through the mountains for more than two

hours Saturday before taking his place in the bleachers with the common folk watching ski

jumping. For a while there, he really did look like a man of the people as he had proclaimed

to be for years on the campaign trail.

It was a nice show of support by the vice president for the Americans, who need all the

help they can get when it comes to ski jumping. The team consists of three ordinary people,

working men with whom Biden supposedly could identify. One is a handyman, another a dishwasher

and the third an ice cream scooper in the summer.

Of course, it didn&#8217t take long before Biden confirmed he&#8217s no Ordinary Joe after

all. He effectively dismissed U.S. jumpers Anders Johnson, Nick Alexander and teenager Peter

Frenette after Johnson&#8217s mother, Chris, draped in a U.S. flag, approached Biden about

offering a the team few words of encouragement after a tough day.

Rather than take a few minutes for the Americans, he greeted them mostly with indifference

and a phony thumbs up. It wasn&#8217t a show of support, just a show. He might as well have

told them to take a flying leap.

Little did he know, the perceived snub had become standard operating procedure when it

comes to ski jumping and the government.

The United States has an official ski jumping team only when it&#8217s good for the United

States, which is every four years when the Winter Olympics roll around. Ski jumping has been

discarded by the United States Ski Association. Funding has been cut off along with the U.S.

team&#8217s chances of winning.

&#8220We just need somebody to be confident in us,&#8221 Johnson said after

Switzerland&#8217s Simon Ammann won the event and was awarded the first gold medal in the 2010

Winter Games. &#8220Throw us a bone, you know? Give us something. Every little bit helps.

We&#8217re working on fumes right now. A little bit in the tank would go a long way.&#8221

By the looks of things, it appears there&#8217s a better chance of throwing the program off

a cliff before throwing it a bone. The three Yanks spent years saving their nickels for

private coaches, training and equipment while other countries spend millions of dollars on

their teams. Austria forked over $500,000 for the team bus alone.

Funny how they competed in the Normal Hill event Saturday because there&#8217s nothing

normal about hauling down a ramp and jumping 105 meters before landing softly at the bottom

with style points in between. The aptly named Large Hill allows jumpers to approach nearly 150

meters.

Television does the sport a great service by giving the appearance that jumpers are

descending from the heavens &#8212 or heading there.

Actually, they fly parallel with the slope of the hill and are only 15 feet above the

surface at the highest point. It looks like a blast from the bottom of the hill, but it must

be harrowing from the top.

&#8220It&#8217s pretty indescribable,&#8221 Johnson said. &#8220The time you spend in the

air feels a lot longer than it actually is. It&#8217s a unique feeling. The feeling of flying

on your own power is pretty cool.&#8221

The Americans knew long before they landed in gorgeous Whistler Olympic Park that they

would be gone in no time, but it didn&#8217t stop them from doing whatever was necessary to

get here. They were there for all the right reasons.

Alexander washes dishes for a living at a restaurant near his home in Lebanon, N.H. He

appreciates his job, but you might say he doesn&#8217t get the same adrenaline rush from

scrubbing plates than, say, competing in the Olympic Games.

&#8220Not quite,&#8221 he said.

Frenette spent the summer scooping ice cream near Lake Placid, probably because he&#8217s

not qualified for anything else. He looks like the kid bagging your groceries. He&#8217s

counting down the 10 days between today and his 18th birthday, when he&#8217ll be able to

vote, drive at night and watch R-rated movies.

He buckled up his skis Saturday morning having exactly zero World Cup points in his career

because he had never competed in a major event before. He stood atop the ramp in Whistler

Winter Park, took a deep breath and let &#8217er fly on the only pair of skis he owns. Welcome

to the Olympics, kid.

You weren&#8217t about to hear the youngest male Olympian complaining. People kept asking

him for his credentials last week because they couldn&#8217t believe he was a competitor. Nice

kid, but it says plenty about the U.S. program when his first big jump comes on the

world&#8217s biggest stage.

&#8220It&#8217s definitely exciting,&#8221 Frenette said. &#8220I&#8217m one of the

youngest to do it, so that&#8217s good looking forward into my career. It&#8217s like a

starting point. Hopefully, I can keep building on this from the Olympics and get better and

hopefully be one of the best someday.&#8221

Don&#8217t you just adore the innocence of youth?

The United States hasn&#8217t been close to the podium since the Coolidge Administration.

Certainly you remember another Anders, Anders Haugen, finishing fourth in the 1924 Chamonix

Games. As the story goes, he picked up the bronze medal about 50 years later when a computing

error was uncovered and pushed him into third.

Americans&#8217 lasting memory for years when it came to ski jumping involved a Slovenian,

Vink Bogtaj, who tumbled off the ramp and was better known as the &#8220agony of defeat&#8221

guy from &#8220Wide World of Sports&#8221 in the 1970s.

The United States has been so accustomed to getting buried in ski jumping that defeat is

not accompanied with agony but with anticipation.

And to think an American woman, Lindsey Van, owns the record for the longest jump for

anyone in Normal Hill. The stuffy International Olympic Committee has refused to accept

women&#8217s ski jumping as an Olympic sport. The U.S. men&#8217s program could be headed for

extinction.

Alexander and Frenette finished tied for 41st on Saturday. Johnson, who helps rehab houses

for his father&#8217s property-management company in Park City, Utah, finished in 49th. It was

also known as second-last. The odds of them winning a medal were wedged between &#8220a

snowball&#8217s chance in hell&#8221 and &#8220when pigs fly.&#8221 But they jumped, anyway,

because they had the opportunity. It would have been nice if Biden jumped at the chance to

greet them. Give him two thumbs down.