Street Attacks Race Like It’s a Downhill and Defeats Austrian By .01

How could it happen? Fourteen months ago, she tore her left knee to shreds in a training run crash at Vail, Colo. Twelve days ago, she was knocked unconscious for 45 seconds after crashing in a downhill at Are, Sweden.

She came to Nagano with throbbing headaches and a neck so stiff she looked like Frankenstein when she turned her head.

She had never finished higher than third in a super-giant slalom in her life, and now Picabo Street was going to come to a Winter Olympics in dire need of a howitzer-shot of adrenaline and pull off another American miracle in Alpine skiing?

Well, it happened. The hippie’s daughter from Triumph, Idaho--the freckle-faced kid who turned Lillehammer on its ear four years ago when she won a silver medal in downhill--did it again.

Using her brute strength on a soft course and flat-out outwitting the Germans, Italians and French in the field, Street hurled herself down the Hakuba course from the second start position Wednesday to win the Olympic super-G with a time of 1 minute 18.02 seconds.

Austria’s Michaela Dorfmeister pulled to within one-hundredth of Street’s time from the 18th position, capturing the silver medal with a time of 1:18:03, and Austrian Alexandra Meissnitzer claimed the bronze at 1:18.09.

“I thought I could come here and win a medal,” Street said. “But I didn’t think it would come in the super-G.

“Everybody dreams of this, but only few people get the chance to make it happen. I’m so excited that I’m almost speechless, if you can believe that.”

Street, 26, streaked down the Happo’one women’s course in a Tiger helmet, her trademark pigtail wagging in the wind. The helmet was a memento from the 1993 world championships in Morioka, Japan, at which Street won a silver medal in combined.

“I thought it would be a good thing to bring the Tiger back to Nagano,” Street said. So where were the vaunted Germans--Katja Seizinger, Martina Ertl and Hilde Gerg? Seizinger finished sixth, Ertl seventh and Gerg, the defending World Cup super-G champion, was 10th.

The course set up perfectly for Street, a natural “glider” who used her strength and fearlessness to barrel down a mountain run softened by the afternoon sun.

“Something wonderful has just happened,” said Diann Roffe-Steinrotter, the American and 1994 Olympic super-G gold medalist. “It takes a unique person, with unique ability, to just pitch herself down a hill like a fastball. When you throw a fastball, you’re never sure you’re going to hit the plate or not.”

Wednesday, in Hakuba, Street was Nolan Ryan pitching at twilight.

Roffe-Steinrotter, now retired, had predicted that Street would have an excellent chance.

“It’s a good course for Picabo,” Roffe-Steinrotter said. “It’s very well suited to her.”

And while course conditions were just right for Street, she clearly outfoxed her opponents.

First, Street used downhill skis instead of super-G boards.

As Gerg would comment afterward, “The race course was made for a downhiller, like Picabo.”

Street also took advantage of a serious German miscalculation.

The top racers get to pick their start position in order of their World Cup rankings, and the cream of the field elected to start between positions five and 15.

The theory is that the top skiers want to let others go before them to get a better read on course conditions.

Because Street is only ranked 24th in super-G, she was slotted in the No. 2 hole.

“I don’t know why Picabo is always in the lucky position,” Gerg would say later.

She was in that position because Seizinger, Ertl and Gerg didn’t want it.

“We made a wrong decision,” Gerg said. “It was not right. Sometimes you make mistakes. Yesterday [at the bib draw], we made a big mistake.”

You’d think the Europeans would learn.

They made the same strategical blunder in 1994, handing the first start position to Roffe-Steinrotter, who won the gold in a monumental upset.

Street was victorious despite making a critical mistake at the top of her run.

“But I got so mad at myself that I tried to make up for on the bottom,” Street said.

It was hard to tell whether Street’s time was a winner until she got by “Murderer’s Row,” a section of racers that started with Austria’s Renate Goetschl at the No. 5 start position and ended--at least everyone thought--when France’s Carole Montillet took off with bib No. 15.

Street most feared Seizinger, who has already won four super-Gs this season.

Seizinger, who defeated Street for the gold in downhill at Lillehammer, bolted from the sixth position and was .02 faster than Street after the first interval.

“She’s gaining on me! She’s gaining on me!” Street said she shouted as she watched. “But I knew I had her beat in the flats.”

Seizinger was .56 behind by the second interval and .36 behind Street in the third.

No one seriously challenged Street’s time until Dorfmeister, a relative unknown.

“It was so hard to stand down here at bottom of the hill and hold your breath,” Street said. “I felt like I had nothing to lose. I just attacked with all my might and power. I felt the vibes of every other American skier.”

Street was eerily relaxed the night before the race, claiming the one-day super-G postponement provided her medical team an extra day to work on her aching body.

She still suffers residual headaches from her Jan. 31 downhill crash in Sweden. And while the concussion she suffered left her sensitive to bright light, Street never considered missing the Olympics.

After the crash, she was examined in Sweden by a neurologist. A CT scan and X-rays revealed no serious injuries.

At a sponsors’ party Tuesday night in Hakuba Village, Street--dressed comfortably in a parka and an exotic, ankle-length Asian dress--slowly swiveled her neck from side to side.

“It’s basically whiplash,” she explained of her injury.

Street wept after she regained consciousness on the hill in Sweden--not because she was in pain, but because she had broken her favorite pair of downhill skis.

Her mood upon arrival in Hakuba was upbeat.

Tuesday, her alarm sounded at 5:30 a.m., but at 6:03, her coach told her to go back to bed because the race had been postponed because of poor weather.

The news did not disappoint her.

The more it snowed, the more the conditions seemed to favor Street.

Seizinger, the race favorite, is almost unbeatable on bedrock courses.

But the softer snow at Hakuba figured to slow Seizinger and her world-class teammates, Ertl and Gerg, and give Street, a good soft-snow skier, a medal chance.

Street’s return from major knee injury in December of 1996 in Vail had already been remarkable enough. Street finished 11th in two super-Gs before Nagano.

She certainly picked the right time to be first.

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MEDALISTS

Skiing

Women’s Super-G

Gold: Picabo Street, U.S.

Silver: Michaela Dorfmeister, Austria

Bronze: Alexandra Meissnitzer, Austria