After Injuries and Frostbite, Koznick Ready for Spotlight

Herwig Demschar, the U.S. Ski Team women’s Alpine coach, sat in a hotel lobby in Beaver Creek, Colo., in November and assessed his team’s Olympic medal hopes in Nagano.

Things didn’t look golden at the time.

Picabo Street? Maybe, although Demschar was still concerned about her surgically repaired left knee.

And if any other U.S. woman came home with a medal?

“I would be very drunk,” said Demschar, hired away from the Austrian ski team after the 1994 Lillehammer Olympics. “I would open a couple of bottles of champagne. I’d even buy with my own money.”

Demschar might have to ready the corkscrew.

Street, of course, has already prevailed, winning gold in the women’s super-giant slalom last week in Hakuba.

Thursday, in the women’s Olympic slalom, it could be Kristina Koznick’s turn.

Koznick? The name doesn’t quite have the same ring as Picabo Street’s, but the 22-year-old from Burnsville, Minn., is America’s last best hope for another Alpine medal at Nagano.

After years in the role of next-American-ski-star-on-the-horizon, Koznick has finally lived up to billing.

At last healthy after a maddening series of injuries, Koznick has swooshed to the World Cup slalom’s upper echelon.

Koznick, who had never finished better than 10th in a World Cup race before this season, now finds herself as a serious gold-medal candidate in a discipline diluted somewhat by the retirement of three-time gold medalist Vreni Schneider of Switzerland and the uncertain medical condition of Sweden’s Pernilla Wiberg, last year’s World Cup overall champion.

So how did Koznick get in this picture?

She actually entered Nagano as the hottest slalom skier on the circuit, having won the last World Cup stop at Are, Sweden, defeating German ace Hilde Gerg.

Koznick ranks second in the World Cup slalom rankings behind Sweden’s Ylva Nowen, who won four races early in the season but has since cooled.

This has to be pretty heady stuff for Koznick, who grew up learning how to ski on the bunny slopes of Burnsville.

The question is: What kind of Olympic nerves will Koznick have?

“It’s my first Olympics and my first time in Japan,” she said after her World Cup victory in Sweden. “I think it’s going to be quite a culture shock.”

For that reason, Demschar has kept Koznick under lock and key since she arrived in Japan.

“For us, the approach will be not to do anything tricky,” Demschar said Wednesday. “What she’s accomplished on the World Cup is outstanding and we don’t want to put any more pressure on her. But I know she wants to do something special. Only the medals count here and I think she will go full out no matter the outcome.”

Koznick might have been a story in Lillehammer four years ago had she not tore left knee ligaments three months before the ’94 Olympics.

Her career until this year had been a train wreck. Koznick won eight U.S. junior championships but then could not stay out of harm’s way.

In 1995, Koznick came close to losing her toes because of severe frostbite. In 1996 it was back problems.

But this has Koznick’s year from the first gate in November, when she opened the World Cup season with a fourth-place slalom finish at Park City, Utah.

Koznick has three top-three finishes this year--one first, two seconds--and two fourth-place finishes.

Her slalom competition here will likely be Nowen and a revitalized Wiberg, who staggered into Nagano nursing a bad knee and broken ribs, but has already scored a silver medal in the downhill.

Experience factor? Wiberg has won 13 World Cup slaloms to Koznick’s one.

Another American to watch is America’s Julie Parisien, who earned a spot on the team after a three-year layoff. Parisien, 26, was once the world’s top-ranked slalom skier and the last U.S. racer to win a slalom before Koznick.

Parisien quit the team after Lillehammer and spent three years on the pro tour before returning to the U.S. program this fall, paying her own expenses as she worked her way back.

Tasha Nelson and Sarah Schleper will be the other two U.S. entrants.