LILLEHAMMER / ’94 WINTER OLYMPICS : NOTEBOOK

About the time they hung another medal around Tommy Moe’s neck, teammate AJ Kitt was packing for home.

Kitt’s work is done in Lillehammer and he will return home today to Rochester, N.Y., where he plans to rest before the resumption of the World Cup circuit, which moves to North America after the Olympics.

Kitt, before Moe’s burst of fame, was America’s most famous downhill racer. But he finished 17th in Sunday’s downhill and went off course in the super-giant slalom.

He said it was just as well: “Better than being fourth or fifth.”

Kitt didn’t even have a mountain to blame.

“It is very suited to me,” he said of the Kvitfjell course. “Guys are just skiing better than me now.”

Kitt has never known Olympic glory. He finished ninth in the 1992 Olympic downhill at Albertville, France.

He can, however, speak of Moe’s streak. Kitt, 25, has been that hot before, though not with so much at stake. Moe has never won a World Cup downhill. Kitt has. And Kitt, in ‘92, finished second at Kitzbuhel, Austria, the Indy 500 of downhills.

“You know you’ve got a shot every time you put the skis on,” Kitt said of what Moe is feeling. “It’s just being in a groove, being confident, being in tune with your skis. It’s hard to explain. I wish I would have written ideas down when I was in the groove, maybe it would be easier to find it again.”

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Who was Kyle Rasmussen kidding?

After losing his line on the super-G course, the American skied between the two poles of a slalom gate, disqualifying himself.

Except that he kept on skiing straight through to the finish.

“I thought to myself, ‘Maybe nobody noticed,’ ” Rasmussen said. “And then it was like, ‘Yeah, right, this is the Olympics.’ ”

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Moe’s girlfriend, Megan Gerety of the U.S. women’s Alpine team, did not see his silver-medal run.

Gerety, who had flu, decided to watch the super-G from the Olympic village. When she couldn’t get the race on television, she took the first bus to Kvitfjell, but arrived too late. She was on the chairlift as Moe raced.