Comebacks Are Golden for Bergoust and Stone

Americans Eric Bergoust, who pulled a Hermann Maier in practice, and Nikki Stone, a broken has-been 18 months ago, made remarkable comebacks here Wednesday, and jumped to gold medals in Olympic freestyle aerial skiing.

And both did it mostly by landing eye-popping first jumps, Bergoust getting a world-record score on his quadruple twist. His high-flying, twisting somersaults were worth 133.05 points in the eyes of the judges, and put him so far ahead of the field that he needed little more than an upright landing on his second to assure himself of the victory. Instead, he also scored high the next time out and won going away.

Sebastien Foucras of France was second, and Dmitri Dashchinsky of Belarus, the leader after Monday’s qualifying, won the bronze. World Cup leader Nicolas Fontaine of Canada was no threat and finished 10th.

Stone, on a windy day when some of the women downgraded the degree of difficulty of their jumps, stuck with the high-risk, high-value tricks she has been doing all season--a triple twisting somersault and a layout tuck twist--landed them both, and won nearly as conclusively as Bergoust, finishing well ahead of Xu Nannan of China, and Colette Brand of Switzerland.

It was Bergoust, though, who stirred the appreciative crowd with his opener--and surprised himself in the process.

“I was halfway there,” he said, alluding to the gold medal. “Actually, I was more than halfway there, but I tried to just tell myself I was only halfway there. I was in shock. I couldn’t believe I’d had a jump like that after having the worst crash in the last two years in training [just before the competition].

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He had crashed earlier, though, just as Maier, the Austrian Alpine skier, had done in the men’s downhill.

“We were waiting for the wind to die and it died and just as I turned in to go, it picked up again. I got a pretty strong headwind, which slows you down a lot, and pushed me back in the air. I tried to get my feet underneath me, but I didn’t quite make it in time and I landed right on my chest.

“When I rolled to the bottom of the hill I wasn’t sure that I’d be able to jump today. But then I checked myself out and I was OK.”

Considerably better than OK, if his jumps were any criteria.

Foucras was the leader on the board with 126.15 points when Bergoust launched his first jump and blew the Frenchman off the ski hill. He drew three perfect sevens from the judges.

His closer, another quad twist, wasn’t quite so good but still got the second-highest marks of the round and gave him the gold easily.

Stone was facing a big challenge too. She just missed qualifying at Lillehammer four years ago and nearly gave up the sport. Then, when two scrambled back disks laid her low in 1996, she was told she would never ski again.

“I never thought I’d [even] be sitting for half an hour again,” she said. “I questioned whether I’d ever ski again, never mind jumping.”

The degeneration, caused by her hard landings over the years, kept her out of action for nine months, but she hit the gym for weight training, built up her back muscles and came back as strong as ever, Still, she competes knowing that the disks could rupture at any time.

“Those are the jumps I’ve been doing all year and backing down would have been silly because I haven’t competed with other jumps,” she said. “I wanted to stick with my plan . . . and it worked out. . . . This was my goal for life.”

Her gold for life too.

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MEDALISTS

Freestyle Skiing

WOMEN’S AERIALS

Gold: Nikki Stone, United States

Silver: Xu Nannan, China

Bronze: Colette Brand, Switzerland

MEN’S AERIALS

Gold: Eric Bergoust, United States

Silver: Sebastien Foucras, France

Bronze: Dmitri Dashchinsky, Belarus