On Easy Street?

It isn’t quite true that Picabo Street’s gold-medal run on Wednesday in the super-giant slalom came on her first trek down the Olympic track.

A year ago, three months after reconstructive surgery on her left knee, Street took a test run down the Happo’one course while riding the back of her coach, Andreas Rickenbach.

Street wanted to soak up the vibes of the course, take a mental snapshot of the turns and the trees, for when she returned a year later.

The fact that Street scorched the course on her first competitive run, winning a gold medal in an event in which she had never placed higher than third, has put an ache in the stomach of every other racer entered in Saturday’s women’s downhill.

Street’s upset victory now makes her the prohibitive favorite in her favorite event.

Not only is Street going for double gold, with a top-three finish she would become the first U.S. Alpine skier to have won more than two Olympic medals, having claimed a silver in downhill at the 1994 Lillehammer Games.

“This gives me confidence, is what it does,” Street said, “because this is my first time ever skiing on this hill, and I won a gold medal on it. So I think I can do all right in the downhill.”

Picabo knows downhill. She was the World Cup titlist in 1995 and ‘96, and the ’96 world champion in the event.

The only lingering doubt before Nagano was how far she had progressed from the serious injury and surgery in December 1996.

Street came to Nagano 17th in World Cup downhill rankings but proved she had fully recovered by placing fourth in a Jan. 22 downhill at Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy.

Street’s high-speed crash at Are, Sweden, the next week--in which she suffered a concussion--was frightening, but Street said it had a cleansing effect.

“Everyone says when you have a knee injury, the big hump you get over is having another big crash and walking away from it OK,” she said. “I had that in Are. It might have seemed inappropriate timing, but it needed to happen before I came here, apparently, and it did. So I’m not angry about what happened in Are. I don’t see it as my fault or anyone’s fault. It was just something that had to happen and it happened. And I think that was the final note, ‘You know what, I’m healthy, 100%, good to go.’ ”

Street’s competition has to be nerve-racked.

In the super-G, race favorites Katja Seizinger, Martina Ertl and Hilde Gerg finished sixth, seventh and 10th.

The women--all Germans--figured to dominate these Games, yet they were outraced and outwitted on a soft course they claimed played right to Street’s strengths as a glider.

In a strategic move, Street raced the super-G on her downhill skis. The Austrians noticed the maneuver and ordered Alexandra Meissnitzer, skiing from the No. 5 position, to make the switch. Meissnitzer won the bronze medal.

Michaela Dorfmeister of Austria also made the change to downhill skis and nearly matched Street’s time from the 18th starting position, losing the gold by a hundredth of a second.

The Germans who stayed on their super-G skis came up with nichts.

Dorfmeister and Meissnitzer, however, should not pose a threat in the downhill.

Street’s primary competition will be Seizinger, Gerg, Austria’s Renate Goetschl and Italy’s Isolde Kostner.

But, at this point, can anyone stop Street?

“I guess it might take the pressure off a little as far as my expectations of myself,” Street said. “Since I was 10, like I said, I wanted a gold medal, and I got it. So now I have a different approach doing into the downhill, in that I might be a little more relaxed, in not feeling that crunch--’Oh, I didn’t get it in the super-G, now the downhill is my only event left’--you know what I mean?”