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VANCOUVER, British Columbia (AP) — These weren't miracles. Bode and Ryan Miller are too good for the feats they pulled off Sun- day to be total shockers. Bode Miller won the first gold medal of his Olympics career, taking the super-com- bined with plenty of flair — roaring back from seventh after the downhill with a blazing slalom run. Then, hours later, goaltender Ryan Miller made 42 saves to help the U.S. hockey team upset Canada 5-3 in one of its biggest wins since the famous Miracle on Ice in 1980. The hockey win gave the Americans a perfect record in the preliminary round and assured them a berth in the quarterfinals. Bode Miller's victory bumped the U.S. medal count to seven gold and 24 overall to lead all countries. One more medal and the Americans will match the 25 they won in 2006, their most at a Winter Olympics not held at home. Miller's perfor- mance at that Olympics was forgettable, when he partied away his status as the favorite going into the games. Now, with a medal of each color after three races, Miller is one of the feel-good stories of the Vancouver Games. ''The level I skied at is at the very top,'' he said. ''It feels amazing.'' HOCKEY The U.S. came out wearing jerseys nearly identical to those worn by the 1960 gold-medal win- ning team at Squaw Valley, which also was the last group of Americans to beat Canada in the Olympics. The U.S. lived up to the threads with Brian Rafals- ki scoring just 41 seconds into the game and Rafalski scoring again later in the period. Chris Drury and Jamie Langenbrunner scored to put the U.S. up 4-2, and the Americans held off a relentless late surge by Canada that included Sid- ney Crosby's goal with 3:09 remaining. One play summed up the first game, a rematch of the 1998 gold-medal game between Russia and the Czech Republic: Russia's Alex Ovechkin flattening Jaromir Jagr with a hit at center ice that also broke his visor. The Russians won 4-2 to claim first place in their group. Evgeni Malkin scored twice for Russia and Ovechkin had two assists. ''I wish I had a concus- sion and just forget what happened,'' Jagr said. ''But I remember it.'' 2B – Daily News – Monday, February 22, 2010 Newspaper website visitors spend more time online than other internet users January 2010 Stats 370,761 Page Views 52,407 Unique Visitors RedBluffDailyNews.com is the most visited local site for local news & information Average online hours per week 9 hours General internet population 9 hours 19 hours Newspaper Visitors 19 hours ` A week after they met at the EALs, Reid gave the section's top ranked 154-pounder a scare right off the bat when he picked Galle- gos clear off the mat and dumped him for an early 2-0 lead. The slam must have woke up Gallegos, who responded by taking a 6-2 lead before the first round was over. Reid however, hung with Galle- gos and ultimately lost 9-6. Beardsley made up for his loss against Pleasant Valley's Derek Tenkoff a week earlier, to earn his crack at a 132-pound finals match against Paradise's Nick Morelli. Beardsley too got off to a quick lead over one of the section's best and led 4-0, before Morelli turned things around with a five-point move on a reversal into a near fall following a restart. Morelli would win 11-7, but Beardsley said afterward the match gave him confidence heading into Saturday's Masters Tournament. For the Cardinals wrestling team, it wasn't so much gaining confidence as it was experience during their first post-season encounter with the Division I schools. "We're not used to seeing this level of competition," Romo said of the benefit the Cardinals received from grappling with some of the EAL's best a week earlier than pre- vious seasons when they would have competed in the Division II championships before heading to Masters. Nine Cardinals qualified to wrestle at the Masters and Calvin Meister and Billy Crawford picked up third place finishes. Both of them found themselves matched against the Spartans' Reid brothers. Crawford fell to Dillon in the 154-pound semifinal, before bouncing back to take third and Meister had a battle with J.T. Reid in the 147-pound third place match. After two scoreless periods, Meister started the third period down and earned the first points of the match with 37 seconds left. Twenty seconds later Reid coun- tered to tie the match back at 2-2, but just as the buzzer sounded, Meister pulled off one last reversal for a 4-2 win and jumped up pump- ing his fists in excitement. While the Spartans ended up with a fourth-place finish in that division, they won six third-place matches on the day. Besides Wilson's finish, Kurt Buxton took third at 105 pounds, Tyler Demarath at 127 pounds, Bryce Eggert at 162 pounds, Taylor Hickson, who was also ill, at 173 pounds and Jeff Skaggs ended the day with an impressive pin in the heavyweight division. Dan St. John at 114 and Dylan Gorbet at 191 pounds took fourth place finishes for the Spartans. "This was a step up," coach Dave Rottenberg said of the perfor- mance compared to the EALs. But not only was Rottenberg impressed with the improvement over a week ago, but how his Spar- tans had dealt with the adversity of illness and teammates missing weight during the week. "For just high school kids they showed really good focus and intensity," he said. Elsewhere in the tournament, the top seeds had their way, with just one failing to win his weight class. The lone upset of course came from the Chico Panthers when Ross Longnecker beat Oroville's Peter Phelan in the 173-pound final. The Panthers won six titles on their way to 217.5 points. Longnecker was joined by Mason Sauseda (114), Efren Rodriguez (127), CJ Berry (162) , Jessen Cole (191) and the top 105- pounder in the state, Nashon Gar- rett, in winning individual titles for Chico. Red Bluff finished with 178 points and was followed by Foothill in third with 165 points. Pleasant Valley had a pair of individual winners in Desi Rios at 147 and heavyweight Kenny Young and was fourth with 138 points, followed by Corning with 100.5 points. Shasta was next with 99 points and had the 137-pound champion in Terry Matthews. Blain Shaw (121) joined Morel- li to give Paradise two champions and lead them to 85 points. Oroville finished with 63.5 points, followed by Las Plumas with 27 and Enterprise with 17 points. The Spartans and Cardinals will join the North State's best Friday and Saturday at the NSCIF Masters Championships at the Redding Civic Center. (Continued from page 1B) 2ND Bowling League bowling scores for the week of Feb. 16- 19. Tuesday Senior Mix- ers Roselin Peterson 200 - 508 Kathleen Pierce 212 Jerry Camba 204 - 544 Fred Zastrow 203 Joel Morrison 203 - 594 Weday Mens Com- mercial Chris Goddard 266 - 712 Mike Armstrong 255 - 623 Kory Gunderman 223 - 640 Ed Lee 221 - 601 Friday Adam & Eve Chris Gulliford 300 - 751 This is Chris's second Perfect 300 this week. He bowled another perfect 300 in a bowl- ing club in Redding on Tuesday. Fred Zastrow 210 - 579 Bobbie Powell 169 - 421 Ann Colby 158 - 455 Saturday Jumbled Juniors Andrew Serrano 222 Courtney Crisel 174 Johnson wins at California FONTANA (AP) — Jimmie Johnson knows he got lucky. So do the Richard Childress Racing drivers who went from leading to chasing him the final laps. The fortunate break for Johnson in his victory at California came because he was already in the pits when a late caution flag came out Sunday. The No. 48 Hendrick team completed the stop and Johnson passed the scoring line at the end of pit road before Childress' Jeff Burton and Kevin Harvick were able to cross the start-finish line. That split-second kept Johnson on the lead lap, and allowed him to regain the lead when everybody else — including Burton and Harvick, who were 1-2 when Brad Keselowski spun in Turn 4 — pitted under yellow. Johnson stayed in front the final 20 laps after the restart. ''There's no way of getting around how lucky they are,'' Harvick said. ''Yeah, the deal on pit row, there's no way around it, we got lucky,'' Johnson said. ''We were running fourth or fifth at the time, so it's not like we totally backed into this thing. We got a really nice gift with the way things worked out and it was up to me to kind of hang on to it.'' Consider the drive for five under way after he held off a charging Harvick on the closing stretch. After winning his unprecedented fourth consecutive Sprint Cup championship last year, Johnson started this season by finishing 35th in the Daytona 500. And there he had some bad luck, a flat tire possibly caused by that pothole before his race ended later because of a broken axle. With Harvick trying to get around him with just more than three laps to go on the slick two-mile Cali- fornia track, Johnson moved to block. Harvick scrapped the outside wall out of Turn 4 and lost his momentum, allowing Johnson to go on to his 48th career victory, and fifth in 15 races at his home track. ''Caught the wall there just enough to knock the right fender in,'' Harvick said. ''He moved up and did what he was supposed to do to take that line away. ... He did exactly what he had to do.'' Harvick had cut the margin by more than six-tenths of a second in a matter of laps — from 0.983 to 0.311. He was making his move at the end of lap 247 of 250 when he brushed against the wall. MCT photo USA's Jack Johnson celebrates after the Americans beat Canada 5-3 Sunday. Miller time