World Cup Skiing : Longshot Fletcher Gives U.S. Team First Victory

Feelings that had been kept bottled up throughout a long, frustrating winter finally popped their cork for America’s women ski racers Saturday.

This release of pent-up emotion came about in a most unlikely manner: Pam Ann Fletcher, who started the season in the U.S. Ski Team’s training group, outskied the big girls and won a World Cup downhill race on the Avanti International Run.

It was the first victory by an American, male or female, since the start of the World Cup circuit last December.

All the pumped-up Fletcher could say in the finish area after her number shot to the top of the leader board was: “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it.” Over and over again, punctuated by an occasional, “Yippee!”

And one by one, the fallen stars of the team ran up and hugged her. First to reach her was Debbie Armstrong, the 1984 Olympic giant slalom gold medalist who is still wearing a cast on her injured knee; then in quick succession came Diann Roffe, also recovering from knee surgery, and Tamara McKinney, the 1983 World Cup overall champion who is tied for 20th with teammate Eva Twardokens in this season’s standings.

As each hugged her, the laughing, crying, almost incoherent Fletcher repeated: “I can’t believe it.”

But her time of 1:54.28 made believers out of Canadian Laurie Graham, who was second in 1:54.60 and Switzerland’s Maria Walliser, who won the season’s World Cup downhill title with 115 points by finishing third in 1:55.08.

Walliser’s only challenger, Katrin Gutensohn of Austria, finished seventh in 1:55.86. She needed to win this final downhill race in order to overtake the Swiss woman.

Today, Walliser will also try to zero in on clinching the World Cup overall title as the women compete in a super giant slalom on Vail Mountain.

Graham, who was the No. 6 starter, made her run during a snow flurry, but it was good enough to stand up through the challenges of both Gutensohn (No. 13) and Walliser (No. 15). Said Walliser: “At least, the conditions were about the same for both Katrin and me, so it was a fair race.”

However, Graham’s time couldn’t withstand the challenge by Fletcher, skiing way down the list as No. 30. Just before she entered the starting gate, the sun broke through the shifting clouds, creating a slight glaze on the track. This conceivably could have made it a fraction of a second faster for Fletcher’s run, but as Graham said: “I’m not complaining. It’s all part of the sport.”

Fletcher said she was “so focused on my run that I couldn’t tell you what the weather was like when I started. I just took what I got.”

And as she crossed the finish line at the end of her go-for-it dive down the 9,109-foot-long course that dropped 2,265 feet, Fletcher said: “I wasn’t sure how fast my time was, but I could see Harald jumping up and down and screaming, and I knew it must have been great. Then. . . Well, I just couldn’t believe it.”

Harald Schoenhaar, director of the U.S. Alpine program, has been under some fire for the disappointing results of his team, especially among the talented corps of women racers. He said, “Pam put a great cap on the season,” then admitted, “but it doesn’t solve our problems. We are going to have to make a detailed evaluation of where we stand and make the necessary changes for next season.”

One change may be a greater involvement for Max Raemy, a former Swiss coach who worked with the U.S. women downhillers when they were in Europe.

An immediate benefit of his coaching has been the rapid improvement of the 23-year-old Fletcher, who sounded an early warning of what would happen here by finishing seventh in both of the previous two World Cup downhills, at Furano, Japan, and Sunshine, Canada. She also was third in a super giant slalom at Furano.

All of this has happened, Fletcher said, after she “almost quit” last summer.

“I was so disappointed with last season that I was just about ready to go back to school,” she said.

Fletcher, from Acton, Mass., has taken several summer courses at the University of Colorado and may return for more this June. But any serious college work is going to have to wait.

“Now, I would really like to race at least through the 1988 Winter Olympics,” she said. “The last few weeks have done wonders for my self confidence. I know how to handle myself mentally before a race, and I know I can ski with anybody. I’ve learned something every time, going against the best in the world.

“Ski racing is half mental, anyway, and if you approach each race with fire and guts and a burning desire to get down the hill the fastest way possible, you’ll win.”

One of Fletcher’s first concerns after finishing and calming down to mere hysteria was to call for a walkie-talkie. “I want to tell Dave to have the rest of the girls just go all-out,” she said. Dave Culp, at the top of the hill, is the Dynastar technician who maintains the skis for the U.S. women downhillers.

Altogether, six Americans finished in the top 15 and earned World Cup points--Adele Allender was sixth, Holly Flanders 11th, Sondra Van Ert 12th, Hilary Lindh 13th and Lynda McGehee 14th.

Allender is Fletcher’s roommate. Asked what they did the night before the race, Fletcher said: “We just hung out . . . and ate pizza.”

For Flanders, 28, this was the end of a nine-year career on the U.S. Ski Team. She was the last American woman to win a World Cup downhill, at Mont Ste. Anne (Quebec), Canada, in 1984. Down one leg of her racing suit Saturday, she had painted a bright orange sun and the inscription, “It’s been great.”