Kristina Koznick took the long way around on an already long and winding road, but it has deposited her in an enviable and ironic position.
Koznick, a 26-year-old Minnesotan, is poised to become the first U.S. woman to win a medal in alpine skiing in these Olympics, yet she has not been part of the U.S. ski team program for the last two seasons. She will take aim Wednesday in her strongest race, the slalom. She has a win and three second-place finishes in the event on the World Cup circuit this season.
“I’m pretty much in the best shape of my life,” Koznick said this week.
She became a one-woman breakaway republic in mid-2000. The immediate impetus was assistant coach Dan Stripp’s departure from the national team. Koznick and Stripp had a healthy professional relationship and a deepening personal bond that had been noticed by skiers and team officials, although the two say they were not romantically involved until after he left the team.
Koznick, who had been with the team since she was 15, thought she had stalled just short of the summit of her sport and needed a more personalized training program. Tired of a constantly changing cast of coaches, she wanted someone committed to her, and it didn’t hurt that Stripp’s commitment was already multilayered.
“I’m supposed to be an elite athlete competing at a top level, and my carpet color changed every year,” Koznick said earlier this season. “If you’re going to change the environment around me every year or every two years, what am I supposed to stand on?”
At first, Stripp, 40, resisted the idea of taking on the world together and tried to find Koznick another coach. Finally, after what she describes as “a little arm-twisting,” he agreed to team up with her in the dual role of boyfriend and coach.
“She’s very comfortable disagreeing with me,” he said. “The key is that we had a working relationship way before we had any other kind of relationship. We had already established the respect for each other.”
That proved to be the simple part.
Without U.S. team funding and staff support, Koznick had to buy her own airline tickets and scrounge up her own sponsors. She formed a non-profit corporation and established a Web site to sell gear and keep fans informed. Koznick has managed to recoup much of the $350,000 she estimates she has spent since the 2000-01 season, one race and one T-shirt at a time.
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“She has to do it [competitively] or she’s going to go broke,” said her childhood coach, former Austrian World Cup skier Erich Sailer. “Maybe she needed that.
“It took a lot of courage to do it. I knew her instinct would guide her the right way. That’s why I supported her immediately.
“The big problem with talent like that is too many people want to take credit for it. They always want to introduce something new in their skiing. She got away from all that.”
Koznick said the other U.S. skiers have remained supportive, although she rarely sees them except on race days. One of her staunchest friends is Picabo Street, whose fiance, John Mulligan, is Koznick’s ski technician. In a December interview, Street accused U.S. coaches of making Koznick unwelcome at team hotels during the World Cup season.
“We do our best to span the gap,” Street said. “The only negative that has come from it is the inability of the youngsters on the team to benefit from her leadership. If she’s having a good time and she’s happy and liking where she is and what she’s doing, then she’s beating people and focusing on the right thing.”
But Koznick’s secession didn’t work magic right away. She finished seventh in the World Cup slalom standings in 2001.
“There were a lot of people trying to make it me against the team,” she said. “There was definitely some animosity on the hill. I never had so many people want to talk to me, not because I was successful, but because of the decision I made. That was a challenge. For sure it affected my skiing.”
Koznick currently is second in the World Cup slalom standings to France’s Laure Pequegnot, but the hot skier coming into the race is Janica Kostelic of Croatia, who last week won the Olympic combined event and took a surprise silver in the super-giant slalom.
Since Koznick clinched an automatic Olympic berth in the fall, U.S. team spokesman Tom Kelly has said repeatedly that the team wishes Koznick well in competition.
Although she is not staying in the Olympic Village, her three-man staff was granted U.S. team credentials and she has been training with Sarah Schleper, the other top U.S. slalom skier.
“I think the pressure is more on Sarah, because she’s working [with] the staff that hasn’t come up with the medals yet,” Koznick said Monday. “Wednesday is going to be the first race for my staff and my program, so it’s the same pressure I have in World Cup. Nothing, really, is added.”