SKIING / CHRIS DUFRESNE : Olympic Qualifying Has Some Scrambling

Is there a fair way to pick an Olympic squad? The simple answer is yes.

Hold an Olympic trial and let the team select itself.

However, this allows for one-time fluke performances and sometimes keeps your best medal hopes at home. Ask Dan O’Brien, the world’s best decathlete, who failed to make the 1992 Olympic team because he had a brain-cramp in pole vault at the trials.

For that reason, the U.S. ski team is correct in choosing its 22-person squad (maximum of 14 of either gender) based on overall performance on the World Cup circuit this season.

On the ski tour--where course conditions can change in minutes to the benefit of one skier over another--holding a one-day trial would be unfair.

Still, the selection process for the U.S. ski team, to be announced Feb. 7, is raising eyebrows because of the strict criteria it has set for qualification.

If the team were selected today, some of the United States’ top medal hopefuls would not be going to Lillehammer.

The list would include 1992 silver medalists Diann Roffe-Steinrotter and Hilary Lindh, and Julie Parisien, once the top-ranked slalom skier in the world.

For the men, the qualifying criteria have been outlined as a top-eight or two top-15 finishes on the World Cup circuit. As of today, only Tommy Moe has locked up a spot, with two top-three finishes--one in downhill, the other in super-giant slalom.

The criteria for the women are one of the following: a top-four finish, two top-eights or three top-15s.

Based on the formula, two surprises on the women’s team--Heidi Voelker and Eva Twardokens, will secure Olympic spots. Voelker and Twardokens continued their success Wednesday in a giant slalom at Morzine, France, during which Voelker finished third and Twardokens fourth.

Yet, proven Olympians such as Roffe-Steinrotter, Lindh and Parisien are left to fight for their Olympic chances in World Cup races leading up to Feb. 7.

This, of course, is the kind of competitive tension the U.S. ski team had in mind with the formula.

“It’s an interesting situation,” Paul Major, the U.S. Alpine director, said last week on a conference call to reporters. “The top athletes support the idea, they support this concept, they’re 100% behind it.”

Even if it means leaving the likes of Parisien at home?

“Very accurate,” Major said. “And Julie knows it. Julie knows she needs to be a World Cup performer. She’s had two top-15 results, she needs another top-15 result.”

While the ground rules appear hard and fast, there no doubt will be room for maneuvering.

Terrible course conditions in Europe last month wreaked havoc on the women’s downhill circuit, making it hard to evaluate so-so performances by Picabo Street and Lindh, who is coming back from knee surgery.

And while it was once rumored that Major was considering taking fewer skiers than the 22 allotted, he’s leaning toward taking a complete team.

“I’m unwilling to commit to that right now, looking at where we’re at,” Major said. “We have some weaknesses on the women’s downhill team side and on the men’s slalom side.”

Taking a full squad would allow for the discretionary selection of skiers on the bubble.

Major also said the team selection process would be twofold. He will take one group based on its chances of medaling in ’94. Another group will be composed of young skiers with projected medal hopes in 1998.

Those skiers would be selected if only to gain Olympic experience.

“Every athlete talks about it, they need Olympic experience,” Major said. “They need to be able to go there. Tommy (Moe) talked about it in ‘92, how he was there, saw the hype and the pressure and how he dealt with that. So now he’s going to be ready for Lillehammer.”

That kind of decision-making could spell bad news for such veterans as Roffe-Steinrotter, the 1992 silver medalist in giant slalom, who has been in a slump since the Albertville Games.

It’s a tough call. Bill Johnson, the 1984 downhill gold medalist, was left off the 1988 team based on poor World Cup performances that year, but he still argues he should have been named to the team based on his potential to win on a given day.

There will be similar debate concerning Roffe-Steinrotter. Not ready to give up the fight, she finished 13th at Wednesday’s GS at Morzine.

Major will be left to make the distinction between medal potential and sentiment.

“We’re going to pick a hard line and stick with it,” he said, “because we believe we have winners on this team. We don’t just want to take people to participate. We want to take people who either have potential to medal in ’94 or to medal in ’98.”

Ski Notes

Heidi Voelker has been promoted back to the Alpine A team after a month of outstanding World Cup results in Europe, including a career-best fifth in a GS at Tignes, France. Voelker has three top-10 finishes and two top-20s. . . . For the time being, Tommy Moe has surpassed AJ Kitt as America’s best in speed events. . . . After a few weeks of soul-searching in the United States, Jeremy Nobis will rejoin the World Cup men’s team in Europe. Nobis, considered America’s best hope in GS, has been a flop so far this season.

For the sixth season, the Jeep/Eagle dealers and Chrysler are sponsoring a series of 14 free public ski race clinics and race program at various California resorts. The series will include prizes and medals for participants. Skiers must hold a valid lift ticket for that day of competition. The event will be held at Snow Summit in Big Bear this weekend, at Snow Valley on Feb. 5-6, at Mammoth on March 5-6, and at Bear Mountain Feb. 12-13 and March 12-13.

Maybe it should come as no surprise in Norway that the first event to sell out for the upcoming Olympic Games at Lillehammer, was cross-country skiing. . . . Officials are hopeful snowboarding will be granted Olympic status for the 1998 Games at Nogano, Japan. The sport has already been recognized as an “official discipline” by the International Ski Federation (FIS), and there are plans to sanction a World Cup snowboarding circuit for the 1994-95 season. Snowboarding will be a “cultural exhibition” at next months Olympic Games at Lillehammer. Skiing Magazine notes Snowboarding has a couple of other things going for it: One, the Japanese, hosts for the 1988 Games, are nuts about the sport and, two, both the head of the International Olympic Committee and the FIS have children who are snowboarders.

Next time you’re in Aspen, see if you can bum a room off Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States. In 1990, the prince built a 55,000 square-foot vacation home, valued at $25 million, that includes 15 bedrooms, 27 baths and 100 cable TV jacks. Feeling a bit cramped last year, the prince had constructed a cozy, 10,000 square-foot guest house.