VANCOUVER, British Columbia—Awaiting his gold-medal score last week, Olympic figure skater Evan Lysacek wiped away a tear and snatched a toy polar bear from the ice. He skated off leaving a mess behind: a shower of flowers, teddy bears and other tokens of appreciation.
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European Pressphoto Agency
Sweepers scoop up offerings tossed by skating fans in Vancouver.
That's when the pint-size ice cleaners of the Olympic Games sprang into action.
Rarely has there been so much competition for volunteer litter collection. Vancouver chose 30 local children from among 135 who applied to be "flower sweepers." They dart onto the ice between performances, gracefully plucking up the debris in under two minutes, and then placing it into bags to hand over to the athletes.
Skaters competing here have been pelted with hundreds of items—plush hearts, framed photographs of fans and even plastic toy potatoes. All that detritus creates a potential nightmare for Games officials, who are so obsessive about keeping the ice pristine for competition that they flood and refreeze it about every hour.
The flower sweepers are their first line of defense. Bev Viger, manager of figure-skating operations at Vancouver's Pacific Coliseum, began holding Olympic sweeper auditions two years ago. She whittled down applicants on their ability to work as a team and take orders—not to mention skate like a mini-pro.
In the audition, the children had to prove they had sufficient speed, as well as the ability to stop on a dime. Sometimes, says Ms. Viger, the children have to retrieve plush projectiles almost as large as they are.
Ms. Viger ran the sweepers who made the cut through a boot camp at skating competitions last year, where they learned to be quick while portraying a certain refinement.
"They should look nice on the ice. They have to bend down while looking like they are graceful," says Ms. Viger. Like the skating stars, sweepers don sparkly outfits. In Vancouver, each of the girls' outfits features more than 8,000 sequins.
On Sunday night, 11-year-old Nam Nguyen from the Vancouver suburb of Burnaby got his first taste of the spotlight. Sitting on a bench across the ice from the judges in a uniform that features a blue and green Olympic tie, he waited to pounce.
"Go over there!" he was ordered, after a British ice-dancing performance. "If it is a really good performance, we send out three or more of us," he adds.
Nam's first catch was a plush toy, known in competitive skating as a stuffy. "It's like a videogame," he says. "You're the character moving around collecting stuff."
One challenge: "You're not allowed to stick your butt out," he says, to avoid insulting the audience. "It's not hard. You have to stick your toe pick in the ice, and then bend down as if you're doing a squat."
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Nam Nguyen
That's easy for him to say. The three-time Canadian youth champion skater admits he's tempted to show off his own triple-spin skills on the ice. "You feel all of this adrenaline out there, but you have to follow the rules," says Nam, who practices skating two hours a day. (He'll be back at an Olympics to do the spins some day, he predicts.)
The tradition of allowing fans to litter the ice is believed to have begun in Europe, perhaps borrowed from ballet theater. In the 1950s, it made its way to the U.S. thanks to enterprising vendors at rinks.
But the range of stuff that rains down on the ice has escalated far beyond flowers. The Vancouver Olympics, in fact, exhorts audiences in an announcement at the beginning of each competition to make sure that any flowers are wrapped, since fallen petals can leave a mess.
Katarina Witt, the two-time Olympic gold medalist from East Germany, remembers skating in exhibitions as a child when fans would throw candy onto the ice, sending the kids scrambling as if they'd just cracked a piñata.
And she's still puzzled why adult skaters like to receive stuffies. "It's something in figure skating that will never end," she shrugs. Not that she was above the practice: She says she kept the most amusing ones from her competition days in a box that she still has at home. Athletes donate most of the gifts to children's charities, since they can't fit all the loot in their luggage.
There's some competition for the weirdest projectiles. At a championship in 1987, American skater Doug Mattos threw a pizza box on the ice to celebrate his friend, skater Debi Thomas. In a recent interview, American skater Mirai Nagasu joked she wished her fans would throw purses and jewelry.
Day 12 of the Olympics
Bobsledding, speed-skating, and the final in the women's biathlon.
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European Pressphoto Agency
Her teammate Johnny Weir, who has a large following in Asia, was once given a nearly life-size doll of himself, with interchangeable wigs for his different hairstyles. He has also had underwear tossed his way. "I took a picture and put it back in the bag, because you don't know where it came from," he says.
In Olympic figure skating, tossing gifts on the ice is legal and even encouraged. However, if somebody threw an object that disrupted play or seriously damaged the ice, they could be thrown out by security. That hasn't happened recently. But before the start of the Vancouver Games, Mr. Weir said he feared animal-rights activists might throw blood on the ice in protest of his costume, which contained fur. He changed his wardrobe.
Some hockey audiences have even messier traditions. Detroit Red Wings fans start games by throwing octopuses onto the ice. Zamboni driver Al Sobotka, who has traditionally swung an octopus around his head to start games, had to shift that activity to the gate area after the National Hockey League worried about octopus bits on the ice.
In figure skating, where grace is part of the performance, stray tokens of appreciation, plus hairpins and errant bits of costume, can and do wreak havoc. During the 2006 U.S. championships, Emily Hughes lost an earring, sending a flock of sweepers on a wild hunt on the ice.
American pairs skater Randy Gardner, who won gold at the 1979 world championships, remembers an unfortunate incident at an Ice Capades performance where an audience member flung a light-up toy onto the ice as he was being introduced. "I saw it, but couldn't avoid it," he says. "Down I went."
In Vancouver, Nam Nguyen, the sweeper, says he's prepared to handle whatever's thrown his way. He's gotten lots of practice at his own junior competitions, where skaters are expected to pick up after themselves.
At one recent contest, someone threw Nam a beach ball larger than he is. "I had to use the other stuffies to whack it, but still it couldn't fit through the door," he says. "I had to throw my stuffies at my coach. And then throw the ball over the boards."
Write to Geoffrey A. Fowler at geoffrey.fowler@wsj.com
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