U.S. Ski Team a Blend of Experience, Youth

Downhill medalist Picabo Street, season surprise Kristina Koznick and comeback veteran Julie Parisien head the women’s portion of the U.S. Alpine ski team, picked Monday for the Nagano Winter Olympics.

Leading the men’s team was Daron Ralves, who comes into the Games off a season-best seventh-place finish in a World Cup Super-G last weekend.

Also on the men’s squad are 1994 downhill gold medalist Tommy Moe and veteran AJ Kitt.

The 22-member team was announced by Alan Ashley, vice president of the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Assn., who said it combined experience with the potential of such young skiers as Kirsten Clark, 20, and Sacha Gros, 23.

“We have a team of individuals who have proven themselves and another group of athletes who are up-and-comers, our next generation of competitors,” Ashley said in a conference call from Osaka, where the U.S. team goes through processing for the Games.

Street, the world downhill champion and silver medalist in the race at the 1994 Olympics, is coming back after a severe knee injury that sidelined her last season and a serious spill last week in Are, Sweden, that left her with a slight concussion.

But Herwig Demschar, the women’s team coach, said Street was ready for Nagano.

“Picabo is fine,” Demschar said. “She’s doing better than expected. It was a very big crash. She lost a ski and that’s like losing a wing when you are flying. She made the best out of it. . . . Having a crash after a serious injury is very important. It takes that apprehension away. I would have appreciated not have it before the Olympics, to be honest, but it comes when it comes.”

Koznick, 22, from Burnsville, Minn., has developed into the biggest surprise of the U.S. team this season, winning a World Cup slalom at Are last week and finishing in the top six of all the races she has run.

Ralves, from Truckee, Calif., is the only U.S. man to finish in the top 10 of a World Cup race this season, with his seventh at Garmisch, Germany, Sunday.

He also said the selection of the Alpine team was influenced by an arbitrator’s decision last week that placed additional skiers on the Olympic freestyle team.

“I learned my lesson,” Ashley said. “I’ll say we broadened our scope.”

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Nagano will mark the Winter Olympics’ return to Asia after 26 years, and it will show in an opening ceremony stressing Japanese culture.

Keita Asari, the ceremony’s chief producer, said that he has thrown in a good deal of Japanese culture and aesthetics because he feels the country and its people are rarely well understood abroad.

“People overseas don’t necessarily understand the Japanese people well through television,” he said, adding that the TV audience for the Nagano opening ceremony could reach 3 billion.

The ceremony will feature sumo wrestlers, traditional drums and various elements loosely drawn from Japan’s indigenous Shinto religion.