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player ready...The super-giant slalom bears a bit of resemblance to a blindfolded skydive. A shorter version of the downhill with more twists and turns, racers are allowed one visual inspection of the course but no training runs. What you see is frequently not what you get.
Italians Daniela Ceccarelli and Karen Putzer pulled the ripcord at the right time Sunday, finishing first and third, and Croatia’s Janica Kostelic slipped into second, an unexpected result for a slalom specialist with a recently rebuilt knee. The women on the podium were separated by just .27 seconds, with Kostelic .05 behind Ceccarelli’s winning time of 1 minute 13.59 seconds and Putzer rounding out the trio at 1:13.86.
The Italian women had never won two medals in one alpine event. Their performance shouldered out event favorites Alexandra Meissnitzer and Michaela Dorfmeister of Austria and 1998 gold medalist Hilde Gerg of Germany.
The technically daunting Wildflower course at Snowbasin Ski Area was almost as grisly as Grizzly had been in the men’s super-G the previous day. Twelve of the 43 racers who started didn’t make it all the way down, including Coloradan Caroline Lalive, whose DNF was her ninth straight in Olympic and world championship competition and emblematic of the U.S. women’s alpine experience in the 2002 Games thus far.
“Everyone knows if she finished, her time would be really fast,” said Meissnitzer, whose Austrian teammates were as deflated, if not more, by their performance. “She needs a bit more experience.”
Lalive, 22, lost control 10 seconds into her run on the Draba Drop portion of the course and slid on her side before righting herself. She stabbed her poles into the snow several times in frustration.
“The demon in super-G is that you’ve got to give it your all, and sometimes it pays off and sometimes it doesn’t,” Lalive said.
The race closed the book on speed events for the U.S. women, who managed only one top-10 finish in the downhill, super-G and combined races. That bit of good news came from the most unexpected source: 17-year-old Lindsey C. Kildow, named to the team chiefly to gain experience, placed sixth in the combined, courtesy of an excellent downhill run.
Lalive, of Steamboat Springs, Colo., and Kirsten Clark of Raymond, Maine, were projected as standardbearers for the U.S., and Picabo Street was regarded as a threat in the downhill. But despite the emotional lift of returning home after a long World Cup season, the U.S. women were unable to wedge their ski tips into a formidable brace of Europeans.
Any hopes for a U.S. women’s alpine medal now rest on slalom specialists Sarah Schleper and Kristina Koznick.
“We came in here with a lot of expectations, and a lot of people knew, still know, how capable we are of being the best in the world,” said Jonna Mendes, who turned in two solid runs with a 16th place Sunday and an 11th in the downhill. “Unfortunately, it didn’t happen for us. I still have faith in our abilities. Yeah, we’ve been saying that for a long time, but I just don’t see this as a failure.”
Clark, 24, turned in the best U.S. time of the day: 1:15.13, good for 14th place.
Coach Marian Cerigoj pointed to the team’s youth as reason not to be too disappointed.
“I’ve got to keep fighting, keep charging with the girls, keep trying to make the team better,” he said.
With only two World Cup podium finishes in her career, Ceccarelli, a military policewoman who left her family in the Rome suburbs at 15 to train with a ski club, was the second surprise winner on the women’s side at Snowbasin. France’s Carole Montillet won the downhill.
“It was very hard,” Ceccarelli said of her decision to live away from home. “My parents were not even convinced it was the right decision. But they left me alone. They respected my decision. In truth, I was never alone because I spent hours on the phone with my parents and they were always encouraging me.”