updated 1:13 a.m. ET Feb. 19, 2006

TURIN, Italy - The wait was over.

This time, there were no crashes, no disputed calls, no disqualifications. And no Olympic gold medal for Apolo Anton Ohno. Not even silver. Only bronze.

Ahn Hyun-Soo won the 1,000-meter short track speedskating race — his second gold medal of the games — and teammate Lee Ho-Suk took the silver, getting by Ohno with a brilliant pass on the next-to-last turn Saturday night.

“This is something they thrive on,” Ohno said. “The South Koreans have always been very strong.”

And very patient. The South Koreans finally got their rematch with Ohno and made the most of it. Unlike the chaos of four years ago in Salt Lake City, when a massive pileup took out Ohno and three others, this race was clean.

“Obviously, I wanted to win the race, but it didn’t turn out that way,” Ohno said.

He was hot on Ahn’s skates in the closing laps. Lee was third, and darted way out near the padded wall to get a better angle on Ohno, cutting in on the American to take second.

“I sped up,” Lee said through an interpreter. “I was going for Ohno, but more than that, I was going for the win.”

As Ohno crossed the line, he threw up his hands. Known as one of the toughest skaters to pass, he seemed to say, “Oh well, he beat me.”

“That was like a ‘Wow, couldn’t believe it,”’ he said. “It was ... like, ‘Man, there was no room to move.’ That was kind of my emotion.”

The other American, Rusty Smith, finished fourth. China’s Li Ye was fifth.

Smith’s presence gave Ohno a teammate in the race, but other than taking the early lead, Smith never challenged.

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“You have to give it to them,” Smith said about Ahn and Lee. “They’re on top of their game, but it’s not like we’re off by a lot. You’re talking about minor, minor things.”

It was a great night for South Korea’s women, too.

Jin Sun-yu and Choi Eun-kyung swept the top two places in the 1,500. Their teammate, Byun Chun-sa, finished third but was disqualified for impeding, giving the bronze to China’s Wang Meng. Allison Baver, Ohno’s girlfriend, didn’t advance from the semifinals.

The bronze gave Ohno a complete set of Olympic medals. In 2002, he won a disputed gold in the 1,500 over another South Korean skater and took silver in the 1,000.

“That feels pretty good,” he said.

Ahn has been the dominant skater in the 1,000 this season, and he smoothly moved to the front in the closing laps.

“I have a lot of experience competing against Ohno from years back and it really helped,” Ahn said, also through an interpreter.

In his first event in Turin, Ohno stumbled while attempting a bold pass on the leader in the 1,500 and failed to get out of the semifinals. Ahn won the race and Lee finished second.

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“For me to be able to bounce back from that 1,500 is pretty big mentally,” said Ohno, who was later flooded with supportive e-mails from friends in his hometown of Seattle.

“People were just like, ‘Apolo, you’re the best,”’ he said. “For me to hear that stuff at the games was very powerful. I think that really boosted me to be able to compete my best.”

The 1,000 became famous four years ago, when Ohno was caught in a four-skater pileup. He got up and scrambled across the line on his hands and knees for second.

China’s Li Jiajun caught his skate on Ohno’s while trying to pass and spun out. That sent Ohno sliding into Ahn, and both went down, wiping out Mathieu Turcotte of Canada.

And that, in turn, cleared the ice for Steven Bradbury to win Australia’s first gold at a Winter Games. Li was disqualified and Ahn finished fourth.

Four years later, the results were quite different.

“There was a couple of opportunities for me to move up on Ahn,” Ohno said. “They were just skating so tight and any type of move would have probably resulted in disqualification. I didn’t want to risk it.”

If any hard feelings remained from 2002, they disappeared during the bouquet presentation. Wearing a blue USA T-shirt, a blue bandanna and a large gold chain, Ohno stepped onto the podium to receive his flowers.

Ahn then invited Lee and Ohno to share the top spot with him. The three put their arms around each other, and Ohno shook hands with both his rivals.

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