THE OLYMPICS / WINTER GAMES AT ALBERTVILLE : NOTES

Hilary Lindh, who said the downhill course she skied Saturday was “the kind I like,” became the fifth U.S. skier to earn an Olympic medal in that event when she placed second to Canadian Kerrin Lee-Gartner.

Penny Pitou also won a silver medal at Squaw Valley in 1960; Suzie Corrock and Cindy Nelson took bronzes at Sapporo, Japan, in 1972 and at Innsbruck, Austria, in 1976, respectively, and Bill Johnson won the gold at Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, in 1984.

Lindh said that the Meribel women’s downhill track had “action all the way down,” and added: “I need to fight every moment. If there’s an easy part, I relax for a second, and that’s not good. There’s too much time to think.”

The race was held in a light snowfall and drifting fog, which caused some of the losers to mutter about Lee-Gartner and Lindh perhaps having unfair advantages with good visibility when they came down. However, two of the favorites, German Katja Seizinger and Austrian Petra Kronberger, started just ahead of Lee-Gartner. Lindh, leading off the second seeding, was No. 16.

“There are a lot of variables in ski racing,” Lindh said. “Sometimes they go your way, sometimes they don’t. I only know that it doesn’t matter what could have happened. This is what happened.”

Lindh, 22, plans to continue skiing. Asked if she intends to race the downhill in the 1994 Winter Olympics at Lillehammer, Norway, Lindh replied: “I sure hope so.”

According to Dennis Agee, who left Mammoth Mountain to become U.S. Alpine program director last summer, Ernst Hager, the U.S. women’s downhill coach, gave Lindh, Krista Schmidinger and Edith Thys a pep talk Friday night, saying, in effect: “Ladies, this is the Olympics; we didn’t come here just to finish the race.”

Lindh got the message, and Schmidinger, 21, of Lee, Mass., skiing in her first full international season, showed great promise for ’94 by placing 12th.

Thys, who turns 26 late the end of next month, was a disappointing 25th, but the Squaw Valley resident will get another chance today in the women’s super-G at Meribel.