U.S. Slalom Hopes Strike an Ice-Gerg

America’s last best hope for a gold medal in Alpine skied like a banana slug in the first run of the women’s Olympic slalom Thursday and missed a gate in the afternoon run, leaving the U.S. ski team to sigh in half-hearted exasperation: “Thank goodness for Picabo Street.”

Kristina Koznick, the second-ranked slalom skier in the world, did not win gold, silver or bronze. She did not finish fifth, seventh or 10th.

America’s last best hope for gold, in fact, did not finish.

That left the spoils to the rest of the world.

Germany’s Hilde Gerg, the bronze medalist in the women’s combined, overcame a .60-second time differential in the second run to win the slalom by .06 over Italy’s Deborah Compagnoni.

Zali Steggall of Australia won the bronze.

“I don’t know if Debbie had a bad second run or what, but I’m the luckiest person today I think,” Gerg said.

Gerg won in a two-run time of 1:32.40. Compagnoni led after the morning run, setting up an unexpected storybook story line as she tried to become the first woman to win gold medals in three consecutive Olympics.

That was supposed to be be Friday’s story in the giant slalom, an event Compagnoni’s has dominated in recent years.

The 27-year-old Italian was not supposed to be a factor in slalom.

“This is discipline where I’m not the best,” Compagnoni said. “I’m very happy with silver.”

However, skiing last among the top 15 in the afternoon run, Compagnoni could not hold her .60-second lead over Gerg.

Meanwhile, over on the American bench, Koznick tried to reconcile her disappointment. She cried as she hugged her father, Jeff, and again when her boyfriend, Jamie, called from Minnesota.

Koznick was a bona fide medal contender, but her inexperience under fire was always a concern.

Was she nervous in her Olympic debut?

“I really wasn’t,” she said. “Maybe I was just trying to be so relaxed that I didn’t try enough. I think I could have used a little bit of nerves. I think I kept trying to play it [the Olympics] down, like it was no big deal, just another day. But it’s really not.”

Koznick, skiing sixth in the morning run, finished ninth with a time of 46.73, a considerable 1.44 seconds slower than Compagnoni.

She admits to have frozen a bit in her first Olympic start.

“I got a little caught up at the start,” Koznick said. “The starter said ‘Ready,’ and I didn’t hear ‘Go’ for a while.”

Trying to make up time, Koznick stepped on the pedal in her second run and skied off after hooking a gate with her ski midway through her run.

“I was mad,” Koznick said of her second-run mind-set. “I knew what I was capable of. I knew it was a do-or-die situation. All I could do is go for it. I learned a lot on this trip.”

Barring a major upset in Friday’s giant slalom, the U.S. ski team will leave Nagano with only Street’s gold in super giant slalom, a significant drop-off from America’s two-gold, two-silver haul at the 1994 Lillehammer Games.

Koznick is only 22, though, and will get another shot at gold in 2002.

The talent is there.

“Maybe Koz didn’t have enough strategy,” teammate Julie Parisien said. “She was confident, but maybe unsure.”

It was the veteran Parisien who turned in the most impressive American performance with her 13th-place finish. Once the world’s top-ranked women’s slalom skier, the 26-year-old Parisien returned to the U.S. team only last September after quitting the squad after Lillehammer. Parisien paid her own expenses during her comeback and ultimately earned a position on the Olympic team.

“I did what I came here to do,” Parisien said.

Koznick admitted after her race that she didn’t quite know how to handle an Olympic setting.

“The next Olympics I’ll know and be in control of what happens to me 10 days before the race,” she said.

As for Compagnoni, she resumes her quest for her third Olympic gold medal in Friday’s giant slalom.

Thursday’s silver in slalom should quiet the critics who questioned Compagnoni during her so-called “slump.”

The problem with winning every race you enter for a year is that people start waiting for you to lose.

Compagnoni won nine consecutive World Cup giant slaloms before her streak was ended in January. She is the defending world and Olympic champion in the event, but entered Nagano under scrutiny.

Why?

Because on Jan. 5, in Bormio, Italy, Compagnoni did a terrible thing:

She lost a giant slalom.

Didn’t merely lose, but finished third.

Compagnoni followed her third in Bormio with a fifth-place finish in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, and--worse yet--she skied off course at Are, Sweden, in her last pre-Olympic giant slalom.

“Compagnoni in Crisis” rang one headline.

She does not race super-G any longer because of the wear on her knees, both of which have been operated on, and writers were preparing her ski racing epitaph.

Some in the Italian press wondered whether her romance with Alessandro Benetton, the son of an Italian textile magnate, had made her soft.

Soft?

Thursday, Compagnoni won her slalom silver six years to the day after tearing left knee ligaments in the giant slalom in the 1992 Albertville Games.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

MEDALISTS

Alpine Skiing

WOMEN’S SLALOM

Gold: Hilde Gerg, Germany

Silver: Deborah Compagnoni, Italy

Bronze: Zali Steggall, Australia