Bouncing Back; Falling Flat

HAKUBA, Japan —  It was the wrong day to follow Austrian Hermann Maier in a ski race--akin perhaps to a cellist closing for the Rolling Stones--but Picabo Street pointed her long boards down hill and gave it the ‘ol Idaho try.

An hour before Street took off in the women’s downhill on an adjacent course, Maier had dramatically won the men’s super-giant slalom three days after walking away from a horrific-looking crash in the downhill.

Maier’s feat exalted him as an all-time Olympic superhero, and no one from Helsinki to Hakuba was about to top that.

“I’m a pretty amazing lady,” Street would say later, “but I’m not Superwoman.”

Street might have pressed Maier for hero time had she claimed the downhill five days after winning gold in the super-giant slalom.

But Monday’s race did not bring out the sunny side of Street.

“She just didn’t look like she was going ballistic like she normally does,” former teammate Hilary Lindh said.

In a downhill seized by Germany’s Katja Seizinger--a payback for getting snookered by Street in the super-G if ever there was one--Street finished a solid, respectable, glad-she-made-the-bus sixth.

Seizinger defended her Olympic downhill title with a winning time of 1 minute 28:89 on a course, hardened by chemical agents, that was much more to the German’s liking. Sweden’s Pernilla Wiberg, rebounding from her a serious knee injury of her own, took the silver in 1:29.18 while Florence Masnada of France claimed the bronze in a time of 1:29.37.

Street finished .17 out of a medal--a fraction of a second in real time--but a light year in the American short-term Olympic memories.

“I’m not looking for excuses,” Street said. “I skied like a pansy a little bit.”

On this day, Hermann Maier had dwarfed all great comeback tales, although Street had one of her own.

Three days before she won the super-G gold, Street suffered a second-degree ligament tear of her right ankle while playing volleyball with teammates at a local gym.

Street kept the news quiet; the rolling of her ankle would not match Maier’s high-speed crash, replayed in hubs and pubs across the world.

Street would not use the injury as an excuse, but the downhill course was far different than the one on which she won her super-G gold. That surface was soft and forgiving on Street’s injured ankle and surgically repaired left knee.

In the downhill, Street held back a bit as her skis rattled on the icy surface. It didn’t help that Austria’s Renate Goetschl, in the No. 6 bib, had crashed two skiers before Street went down.

Street had fooled the world, perhaps herself, in believing she had recovered fully from reconstructive knee surgery 14 months ago and a concussion suffered in a World Cup downhill in Sweden two weeks ago.

“I’d rather end up sixth and be standing down here talking to you instead of them peeling me out of the fence, which unfortunately could happen real easily today,” she said.

This was not the same hell-bent Street who streaked down the Happo’one course five days earlier wearing her tiger helmet.

That victory made Street the prohibitive favorite in Monday’s downhill, which could not have pleased Seizinger, the World Cup downhill leader.

Seizinger, racing fifth, left no doubt as to the outcome, quickly claiming the lead by .48 over France’s Masnada, who had raced second.

Street’s time was good enough for fourth at the time she crossed, but she was bumped to fifth after Wiberg moved into second place from the 15th start spot; then to sixth when Russia’s Svetlana Gladishiva popped into fifth place from the 27th position.

Street trailed Seizinger at all four intervals--by .07, .07, .51 and .82. It was thought that Seizinger had been psyched out after losing to Street in the super-G. In that race, Street made a strategic ploy by switching to downhill skis. Seizinger and the rest of the favored Germans stuck with their super-G boards and finished out of the medals.

“What made this one so special is that it was so unexpected,” Seizinger said. “After the super-G, I didn’t even think of it in my dreams. I thought I’d have a better chance in super-G.”

Monday, Seizinger pulled a fast one of her own--using a pair of longer men’s downhill skis to gain an advantage.

Street said Seizinger’s problems in the super-G (she finished sixth) no doubt inspired the German.

“She is the kind of person that can rise about all those things, and sometimes needs them,” Street said. “She sometimes needs that much adversity to be able to rise above and pull this from herself.”

Street, too, had pulled from within.

Her gold in super-G was a shocker in that she had entered Nagano still very much on the mend.

Street was able to steal one moment, in the super-G, but not two.

“This was that year off coming back to bite me in the butt,” Street said of her downhill result.

The win in super-G might have taken away a bit of her edge.

“When I look up to the stars, I don’t know what to wish for,” Street said. “I got what I wanted. For so many years, I looked to the stars and wished for a gold medal in the Olympics. Now, I have it. I have to come up with some new goals.”

On the top of Street’s list is reclaiming the World Cup downhill title she held in 1995 and ’96.

She also wants to be in peak form next year, when the world championships move to Vail, Colo.

“Next year at Vail she’s going to blow everyone out of the water,” Street’s dad, Stubby, said. “That’s her house.”

Picabo says she’ll take a break now and reflect on her whirlwind trek from operating table to Olympic podium.

“It’s quite amazing, I think, if you look at the big picture,” she said.

Hermann Maier amazing?

Maybe not.

But amazing enough.

“It’s just starting to set in,” Street said of winning a gold medal. “No one’s going to change it, nothing’s going to happen. It’s mine and I get to keep it.”

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MEDALISTS

Alpine Skiing

WOMEN’S DOWNHILL

Gold: Katja Seizinger, Germany

Silver: Pemilla Wiberg, Sweden

Bronze: Florence Masnada, France