Another Day, Another Austrian Victory : Skiing: Stangassinger wins slalom after teammate misses gate near finish at World Cup event in Park City.

Italy’s Alberto Tomba crashed on Sunday and an American did not.

These were among the few unexpected events at America’s Opener on a weekend in which the Austrian ski team ho-hummed the World Cup world with its depth and dominance.

One day after Austria’s Guenther Mader won the giant slalom, veteran Thomas Stangassinger claimed the slalom title when another Austrian, the upstart Siefried Voglreiter, lost a commanding first-run lead after he missed a gate just yards from the finish line.

Much of the slalom punch was lost when Tomba, who took second in Saturday’s GS, took a tumble in the first run and was disqualified.

The news from the U.S. ski team was better. It couldn’t have gotten worse. After bombing in Saturday’s GS and drawing the ire of the coaching staff, the U.S. men recovered somewhat when Matt Grosjean finished 13th and teammate Erik Schlopy 18th.

Of course, everything is relative. In Austria, such finishes might be grounds for deportation.

Compassion has its place in the sports world, but not necessarily in Austria, where world-class skiers are stacked avalanche-deep and the theory of natural selection lives and breathes.

“If he (Voglreiter) makes a normal second race, I cannot win the race,” Stangassinger said. “But skiing is an individual sport. I must look out for myself. That’s important.”

Stangassinger’s winning time for the two runs was 1 minute 35.34 seconds. Slovenia’s Jure Kosir was second in 1:35.98, with Norway’s Finn Christian Jagge third in 1:36.06.

Stangassinger, 28, had two World Cup slalom victories, but the pressure for an Austrian to win is constant because there’s always someone to take your place.

Had he not missed a gate, Voglreiter, 23, might have been the man Sunday.

“It’s like a forest with a lot of good trees,” Werner Margreiter, the Austrian coach, said of his team. “They all grow the same height, so we have to chop out some.”

The Austrians boasted four of the top 11 finishers Sunday and two of the top 10 in Saturday’s GS.

The U.S. team brass turned some screws of its own after not qualifying a single skier for a second run in Saturday’s GS.

Paul Major, the U.S. Alpine director, considered the performance an embarrassment on home turf and threatened to ship some of his A-team skiers to the Europa Cup tour, the equivalent to being sent to the minors.

“To show up at a World Cup and not qualify is not acceptable,” Major said. “It’s like we threw this great party and they (the Europeans) took our money and left.”

Feeling the heat, Grosjean and Schlopy saved the day for America with top 20 finishes.

“I couldn’t help but think about it,” Grosjean said of the pressure to do well. “We’re at home, in Park City, and the U.S. ski team wanted to show a good finish. I thought about that today, for sure.”

A quality performance from Grosjean, the 23-year-old from Steamboat Springs, Colo., was expected. He is America’s top-ranked slalom skier.

Schlopy’s finish was a ray of hope, considering he is trying to rebound from a horrific crash at last winter’s world championships in which he suffered a broken sternum and two compressed vertebrae.

“Schlopy is a surprise, but a good surprise,” Ueli Luthi, the U.S. men’s coach, said. “We’ll take that any time.

World Cup Notes

The U.S. women had a forgettable weekend in Santa Caterina, Italy, placing one top-15 skier in two giant slaloms and a slalom. Eva Twardokens of Santa Cruz was one of the few bright spots with her eighth-place finish in Friday’s GS. Heidi Voelker of Pittsfield, Mass, followed her 19th-place finish in Friday’s GS with a 16th on Saturday. Diann Roffe-Steinrotter, a GS silver medalist at the 1992 Olympic Games at Albertville, finished 24th in Friday’s GS and did not qualify for a second run Saturday.