‘94 WINTER OLYMPICS / LILLEHAMMER : She’s a Mogul Magnate : 1992 Gold Medalist Donna Weinbrecht Dominated Freestyle Skiing Before Knee Injury, and Now She’s Back

She was the Michael Jordan of her sport. Donna Weinbrecht dominated freestyle moguls skiing almost to the point of tedium.

There was no reason for her to try breaking new ground in a training run on Nov. 17, 1992, at Breckenridge, Colo. Weinbrecht could have bowed out a champion, on her terms. You know, go to the Bahamas, lie low for a month, get restless, then try out for the Chicago White Sox.

In fact, Weinbrecht had considered, at 27, walking away from it all with her cache of 25 World Cup victories, three overall titles, one world championship, five United States titles and the first sanctioned Olympic gold medal for women’s moguls, at the 1992 Albertville Games.

Not even Weinbrecht was sure what she was doing that day at Breckenridge, trying something so daffy as a daffy twister , an aerial maneuver.

“I was having a hard time mentally, after winning the (Olympic) gold,” Weinbrecht acknowledges. “When I first started the freestyle thing, I thought I would have retired in 1992, and here I was on the slopes again. I was with a lack of focus and desire. I knew I wanted to ski, but yet I couldn’t rekindle those kinds of feelings.”

Weinbrecht proceeded with the daffy, but the only thing that twisted was her right knee.

As her coach, Jeff Good, rushed to her side, Weinbrecht lay in agony on the hill.

“I kept looking up at the sky and saying, ‘Oh God! Oh God! Did I blow out my knee?’ ” she remembers.

She blew it out. Anterior cruciate ligament. Three words skiers--and all athletes--hate to hear.

They took Weinbrecht to the famed skier’s surgeon, Richard Steadman in Vail, where it was hoped her knee could be reconstructed well enough for her to climb stairs.

What a way to go out, some said.

What a reason to come back, Weinbrecht said.

The injury, oddly, put her at peace. Her soul searching was over. She had found her motivation.

“I guess the injury gave me a focus to come back,” she says now. “It gave me a second chance.”

Weinbrecht missed the 1992-93 World Cup season. It might have been a lonely time for rehabilitation and introspection but for a CBS television crew that became an appendage. The TV guys were making an Olympic documentary. The camera crew introduced itself to Weinbrecht in the operating room, then announced it would be staying for the winter.

With so much tape in the can, Weinbrecht figured she had to come back.

Weinbrecht proved in her season away she was also the champion of rehab.

“She took the path of most resistance, not least resistance,” said Good. “It would have been much easier to bail, mentally and physically.”

Weinbrecht wouldn’t know for sure about the comeback until more than a year after her injury, Dec. 11, 1993, as she stood at the start of her first World Cup competition at Tignes, France.

It was at Tignes in 1992 that Weinbrecht had claimed the Olympic gold with 20,000 partisans rooting against her.

“I couldn’t even relate to it,” she recalls of the Olympic crowd. “It was like a concert, and you’re on stage. It was too hard to fathom that all those people were looking at you and screaming.”

Tignes was different this time. Weinbrecht’s right knee was now encased in a high-tech carbon-titanium brace.

She felt no pain, but the hinges of the brace that brushed against her left leg served as a constant reminder.

She was nervous, but told herself, “Donna, you took this challenge. You didn’t feel fulfilled and ready to retire yet, so you got to take the ups and downs.”

So much for the downs.

Weinbrecht won the competition.

As in figure skating, freestyle skiing is a judged event, with skiers graded on technical and artistic merit.

Perhaps Weinbrecht’s being the sentimental favorite swayed the judges that day in Tignes.

But Weinbrecht didn’t stop there. Remarkably, she won the first six World Cup moguls events and is the prohibitive favorite to successfully defend her Olympic gold when moguls competition begins here Tuesday.

Even Good, a self-described eternal optimist, could not have predicted Weinbrecht’s return.

“She is, without question, the most unique individual that’s ever been in freestyle,” Good says. “The thing she does best is compete. I think if you did physical testing, probably athletes on other teams, and on our team, are more fit than she is. But there is no way of measuring who is competitive on contest day. And no one’s ever been more consistent than she is.”

Steadman, the surgeon, is as surprised as anyone.

“It was good enough for skiing,” Steadman said of his repair work. “But to come back the next year and be the best in the world?”

The question is, who is going to stop Weinbrecht.

Freestyle is the one Olympic skiing discipline the United States has dominated. While the rest of the world is catching up, Weinbrecht’s toughest international threat here figures to be Stine Lise Hattestad, who won the World Cup moguls title last season in Weinbrecht’s absence. Hattestad, a Norwegian, will have the home-slope advantage here.

Weinbrecht also figures to be challenged by teammates Liz McIntyre and Ann Battelle.

But she envisions an even tougher opponent.

“Myself,” Weinbrecht says. “Dealing with myself.”

What makes Weinbrecht’s career more impressive is that she got a relatively late start in competitive skiing. She grew up in West Milford, N.J., where she began skiing when she was 7.

Her racing career blossomed in high school, after her father had built a second home in Killington, Vt. Weinbrecht initially raced Alpine, but was soon drawn to the artistry and freedom that come with moguls.

After high school, she attended art school for a year before moving to Killington, where she waited tables at a pizza pub and tried to convince her parents that she was training diligently for the U.S. freestyle team.

“My mom said, ‘Yeah, right,’ ” Weinbrecht recalls.

Weinbrecht’s rise was swift. She placed 15th at nationals in 1986, fourth in 1987, was named the World Cup rookie of the year in 1988 and has been virtually unstoppable since.

She says the decision to stagger the Summer and Winter Olympics greatly influenced her comeback decision.

“I get a second chance, and I’m going to seize that chance,” she said. “I was so affected by ’92 and the Olympic spirit. It’s definitely colored my life in remarkable ways. It’s filled every dream I thought of the Olympics being. To take part, and be a returning gold medalist, it’s very exciting.”