And she could. Coach Major didn’t need to drink beer to induce sweet visions in the Norwegian night. He just had to show up at the awards podium in Lillehammer, where American skiers kept putting in appearances with unexpected regularity. Picabo Street, 22, showed there was more than hype to her magical name. She won a silver in the downhill last weekend in her first Olympiad. Liz McIntyre, 28, a lateblooming Dartmouth graduate, won the silver in moguls – alpine’s wacked-out sister sport. Later Moe took the silver in men’s super G – on his 24th birthday, no less. This Friday out-of-nowhere Californian Kyle Ramussen and Moe hope to turn their 2-3 finish in the first half of the combined event – combining runs in the downhill and the slalom – into something like gold, silver or bronze. “It’s the most amazing thing I ever saw,” said Major, pinching himself.
Everybody else, it seemed, was pinching Sports Illustrated. It was not, after all, the ideal month to publish a six-page diatribe trashing the U.S. ski team as a “lead-footed snowplow brigade.” As the medals piled up, so did the crowing. “Sports Illustrated can kiss the U.S. ski team’s ass,” said downhiller AJ Kitt.
The ultimate risky business is skiing itself, not covering or coaching it. A host of tiny factors – silent but deadly – can undo competitors without warning. Fog can cloud over a contact lens, making gate judgments even trickier. Skis waxed to run well at minus 3 degrees can run poorly after a sudden plunge to minus 8. Subzero temperatures last week in the northernmost Winter Games ever held made Luxembourg’s Marc Girardeli – full of metal plates and pins from earlier injuries – feel more like a refrigerator than a skier. “So far, luck’s been with us,” said Kristin Cooper, part of the 1984 team that won a U.S. record five alpine medals at Sarajevo.
Beyond the luck, though, the U.S. team showed pluck and cohesion. Every member of the women’s team has been keeping a diary to stay in touch with feelings, says Street. And Major has tried to increase everyone’s pre-December skiing time to 60 days per year. Plucky was the only word for Roffe-Steinrotter’s trip down Kvitfjell. The super G is a shorter version of the downhill, with wider turns. She drew bib No. 1 – unenviable because the first one down the mountain becomes the ski-racing equivalent of a test rat for potentially fatal slope conditions. After the first turn, Roffe-Steinrotter remembers nothing – except for a wonderful rush of relaxation. “I felt like a waterfall,” she said. And as for Mr. Moe, he spawned a ton of Moe puns – as in moe medals, moe drive, race better skiers. As a 16-year-old, Moe had been kicked off the U.S. ski team for drinking and smoking marijuana. His father, Tom, a contractor, sent him to a place “right close to hell” – a building site in the Aleutian Islands. “I owe a lot to my father,” Moe repeatedly said on the day he became the first U.S. man to win an alpine gold medal since 1984.
Neither luck, pluck nor a bevy of medals makes the future of the U.S. ski program problem-free. Kristin Cooper argues that several problems need fixing if Americans are ever to become consistent alpine winners. Skiing above the recreational level is prohibitively expensive in a land where mountains and glaciers can be a continent away. The costs build as the talent matures. Coach Major, the sixth U.S. alpine director in 10 years, is excited by plans to intensify centralized U.S. training next year in Colorado – following in the tracks of the Norwegians (box). Still, he thinks he needs a 30 percent hike in his $2.2 million annual budget. The Austrians, he argues, spend $3.2 million a year, live at home and drive to the slopes. “Right now,” he says, “we’re like Austrians trying to play NFL football.”
This isn’t a week for poor-mouthing, Coach. Last week your team was better than the Austrians. You were the Kvitfjell Cowboys.
