WINTER SPORTS ROUNDUP : Tomba Shows Olympic Form in Winning Slalom

Alberto Tomba of Italy clinched the World Cup slalom title for the season Sunday at Wengen, Switzerland, winning the last competition before the Olympics, where he will be defending the two gold medals he won in 1988.

Tomba gained his seventh victory of the season with a two-heat total of 1 minute 34.34 seconds, which was 62/100ths of a second ahead of overall World Cup leader Paul Accola of Switzerland.

Armin Bittner of Germany was third, 0.85 behind.

Tomba, who also leads the season giant slalom standings, refused to be slowed. A gate pole he uprooted fell in front of his skis in the first run. But he still was second-fastest, behind Ole Christian Furuseth of Norway.

On his second run, Tomba nearly fell over backward at the top of a slope, and near the finish someone threw a snowball in his right eye.

“Winning wasn’t easy today,” Tomba said. “It’s still four weeks until the Olympic slalom, and the memory that I won the last race is psychologically very important.”

Tomba won the slalom and giant slalom at the Calgary Olympics and is the favorite in the events at the Feb. 8-23 Games in the French Alps.

“You just can’t rely on him making decisive mistakes,” Bittner said.

Tomba last won the World Cup slalom title in 1988, the year of his Olympic triumph.

Accola took a decisive step toward his first overall title by winning the combined at Wengen, worth 100 points in addition to 80 for Sunday’s showing.

The combined counts aggregate results in the slalom and Saturday’s downhill, which was won by Franz Heinzer of Switzerland. Tomba does not race downhills.

Accola now has 1,270 points, Tomba 1,060.

But with eight of nine slaloms run, Tomba has an unbeatable 212-point lead in the specialty ahead of Accola. In addition to five slaloms, Tomba has won two giant slaloms this season.

Deborah Compagnoni switched to longer skis and tamed a lightning-fast course to win a super-giant slalom at Morzine, France, ending a six-year World Cup drought by Italian women.

Two-time world champion Ulrike Maier was second, followed by Norway’s Merete Fjeldavli and American Diann Roffe--whose fourth place was the best super-G finish by a U.S. skier this season.

Late starters such as Roffe took advantage of the midday sunshine, which made the course faster as the race progressed. The sun melts snow, which turns to ice as racers pass over it.

“In some places the speed surprised me,” said Roffe, who started 25th and ended fourth. “This course was set for the downhillers. I think I was pretty much at my limit--the course came at me so fast. It’s only two weeks to the Olympics. It’s coming down to a time when you can’t hold back any more, you’ve got to put all your cards on the table,” Roffe said.

Compagnoni, 21, a giant slalom specialist who usually prefers technical races to those in which speed is predominant, completed the 1.1-mile course in 1 minute 11.02 seconds.

“I went all out at the bottom,” said Compagnoni, who had only the sixth-best time at the top of the course. “I thought I would do well here, but I never thought I would win.”

Her victory was the first by an Italian woman in a World Cup race since Michaela Marzola won a super-G at Megeve, France, in January 1986.

Maier, an Austrian who won super-G world titles in 1989 and 1991, finished in 1:11.46. Fjeldavli was third in 1:11.61. Roffe finished in 1:11.64.

Jim Holland breezed to his fourth national ski jumping title at Lake Placid, N.Y., with a near-record leap of 122 meters in temperatures that plunged to near zero.

Holland, who is 11th in World Cup standings, also had a jump of 116 meters for 248 points on the large hill where the 1980 Olympic ski jumping was held.

Tad Langlois of Newport, N.H., was runner-up with 210.3 on jumps of 111.5 and 107 meters at the 1980 Olympic hill.

Completing the top five were Tim Tetreault, an Olympic Nordic combined skier and Holland’s neighbor in Norwich, Vt.; Kurt Stein, Middleton, Wis.; and Bob Holme of Littleton, Colo. Holland, Sanders and Holme are on the Olympic jumping team.

The hill record is 124.5 meters, set by Finland’s Matti Nykaenen, who went on to win three gold medals at the 1988 Olympics.

“I think I could have gone 125 meters today, no problem,” Holland said.

“I hope I can keep this roll going through the Olympics.”