U.S. performances give Alpine ski team a lift

Reporting from Whistler, Canada — 

Bode Miller and Lindsey Vonn exited the Vancouver Olympics like two trucks skidding off an icy interstate.

The star-spangled faces of the U.S. Alpine team both whiffed, in the first run, of their final two gate races: giant slalom and slalom.

If you tuned in late you would have thought American racers were trained by Ghana’s “Snow Leopard.”

Saturday’s men’s slalom was, basically, carnage for much of the field of 102, led by Uncle Sam’s sideways slope sliders. Forty-three racers never saw the first-run finish line on a sloppy, slushy track.

Italy’s Giuliano Razzoli won the gold with a two-run time of 1 minute 39.32. Ivica Kostelic of Croatia finished 0.16 of a second back to earn his second silver of the Games and Andre Myhrer of Sweden claimed the bronze.

Nolan Kasper, who ended up 24th, was the top American finisher.

Ted Ligety and Miller went out, back to back, in the morning run, with Miller clipping so early he barely got his bib wet.

Same old American story except, actually, it wasn’t like that at all.

The U.S. loaded up early -- winning eight medals in six races over seven days -- and whistled out of Whistler with more medals than all the countries that do ski racing for a living.

Miller, Vonn, Julia Mancuso and Andrew Weibrecht came to Vancouver with something to prove -- and proved it.

Ligety left empty-handed but tweeted later that at least he earned as many medals as the Austrian men (zero).

Mancuso cherished her two silvers after not being on the podium in two years. Weibrecht, a 24-year-old rookie from Lake Placid, N.Y., won a shocking bronze in the super combined. One week he was pronouncing his name for reporters, the next he was on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

It was Miller and Vonn, though, who combined for five of the eight medals and repositioned their careers.

Four years after going winless and wacko in Italy, Miller earned Comeback (Human) Award of the Olympics with the most inspired skiing of his decorated career.

It started last spring when U.S. men’s Coach Sasha Rearick locked Bode in a room and persuaded him to rejoin the ski team. It was a last-ditch effort to salvage Miller’s career.

Rearick said Miller, 32, had a chance to rewrite his ending.

How’d it turn out?

“He did it,” Rearick said Saturday in an interview with reporters outside the Whistler Creekside media center. “You guys are going to write the story. He came out and did what he said he was going to do.”

Miller’s three medals -- gold, silver, bronze -- were more than any American Alpine racer had garnered at one Olympics. His five total Alpine medals are also a U.S. record.

Miller got over what was bugging him for 10 or 15 years and fed off the Olympic energy as he mastered the hill and mentored teammates.

“It’s unique and incredible,” he said Saturday of his Olympic experience. “The race the other day was just awesome, the super combined. I’ll remember that feeling and my place in the whole picture, really clearly, for a long time.”

Vonn, with her dramatic win in the downhill, proved she could deliver the golden goods, with pain, under pressure. She added a bronze medal, in the super-G, and came within seconds of another in the combined.

Vonn says growing up on the job is: “when you’ve been in the start gate with millions of people expecting you to win, and you actually do win.”

She leaves here, at 25, knowing one thing as she looks forward to the 2014 Sochi Games:

“I know I can do it again.”

chris.dufresne@

latimes.com