A New Street

Picabo Street is back on her feet, hobbling around with a steel plate in one leg and a reconstructed knee in the other.

She wakes up every morning stiff and hurting, and only recently has she felt comfortable enough to walk down a flight of stairs without holding the railing.

Yet the goals this high-spirited, high-flying Alpine racer is always setting for herself are as lofty as ever--or are they?

Eleven months after striking Olympic gold on the slopes of Hakuba, Japan, in the Nagano Games, and 10 months after breaking her left leg and blowing out her right knee during the final World Cup race of the season in Crans Montana, Switzerland, Street says she hopes to step onto a pair of skis again in March.

“I’m like a caged animal going, ‘Aagghhh, let me out!’ ” is how she describes the long wait.

And despite the severity of her injuries, she expects to be back on the World Cup circuit next winter, hoping to gauge her capabilities as she begins preparing for the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

Nothing strange about any of this.

But once she blasts through the gate for either the giant slalom or slalom--the two events she expects to compete in, possibly forgoing the more dangerous downhill and super-giant slalom--Street will have only one thing in mind: crossing the finish line in . . . third place?

“It’s blowing everyone’s mind, I know,” she says with her trademark smile. “But I want a bronze medal in Salt Lake. Everyone’s, like, ‘What? Why do you want a bronze?’ But a bronze will complete my plate.

“I already have gold, silver and bronze in the World Championships and a gold and silver in the Olympics, so . . . “

So, Picabo Street is willing to settle for third best? This is not at all like the fiery, freckle-faced competitor we have seen before.

She won the gold in the super-G at Hakuba on sheer determination. It goes well with the silver she won in the downhill at Lillehammer in 1994.

She remains the only American--male or female--to have won World Cup downhill titles (in 1995 and ‘96). She has nine World Cup victories and once won six consecutive races.

Her confidence has never been questioned.

But could it be that, at 27 and walking on wobbly legs, the hippie’s daughter from Triumph, Idaho, sees the smoke settling on a career as a world-class Alpine racer?

Has Picabo spent too much time in ICU? Has she hit the fence one too many times?

These are things even she wonders about. She doesn’t doubt that she can rehab her way back onto skis or that she can climb back into the upper echelon of the world’s skiers.

But she’s already talking openly about her future as a TV commentator--she has been hired by NBC to work the World Championships next month at Vail, Colo., and hopes to land a spot covering the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney, Australia.

And she is among those wondering how a fairly recent rash of violent crashes--most notably the bone-crushing spill last March in Switzerland--will play on her psyche as she gets closer to 2002.

“My brain is going to be the most intricate part of me getting back,” she said. “Because I will envision myself hitting the fence again. So . . . it’s kind of funny because my mind will be throwing me for a bunch of loops, but at the same time I’ll be relying on my mind and my experience to guide me. So it’ll be really interesting to see what happens.”

It’s always interesting to see what happens when Picabo Street breaks out of a gate.

Downhill had always been her strongest discipline, yet she won the super-G at Hakuba and finished sixth in the downhill.

Both results were pretty astonishing, however, considering that she had blown out her left knee 14 months earlier during a training-run crash in Vail, and was about the only one who believed she’d be back in form in time for the Nagano Olympics.

Then came the breathtaking Switzerland wipeout. Street lost control on a jump and her left binding released on impact. Her left leg buckled and snapped as she hurtled down the mountain and into the safety net. Somewhere along the way, she tore up her right knee.

Doctors spent three hours setting her broken bone and securing it with a metal plate and a series of screws. She wouldn’t let anyone operate on the knee for weeks later because she didn’t want to be restricted to a wheelchair.

Once they did operate, though, she realized that she could barely get around even on crutches. She nearly broke down.

“I got really depressed because I didn’t even have one power leg and I wasn’t used to that,” she says. “I had two gimpy legs, two flat tires pretty much, and two out of four is half the ride, you know? I was dragging my muffler on the ground.”

It was during this period, though, that winning the gold medal at the Nagano Games really sunk in and inflated her spirits.

“I was really depressed, and then I thought, ‘Wow, there’s, like, 20 of me in the whole world,” she says. “I think I’m the 18th woman to ever win a gold medal [in either the downhill or super-G], you know? That’s huge. You know how many people there are in the world? And you’re the 18th? That’s rad!”

Picabo Street was her old self again. Her spirits soared with every new day.

It didn’t hurt that winning the gold--much like winning the silver at Lillehammer--helped her get new endorsement deals or maintain old ones.

Or that she was named the United States Olympic Committee’s female athlete of the year for the second time.

Or that the 2002 Olympics will be held pretty much in her own backyard, for were they to be on foreign soil, who knows whether she’d have the same drive to give it another try.

Street, who grew up in Sun Valley, Idaho, and was skiing before she was 5, has moved to Park City Mountain Resort, which will host the giant slalom as well as the snowboarding events for the 2002 Games.

Park City has hired Street as its ambassador leading up to the Olympics and leased her a three-bedroom “crash pad” at the base of the resort, which she now calls home.

“It works out great,” she says. “The bottom line about the ambassadorship, and the thing that intrigues me the most about it in a real selfish way, is that I get to ski every day.

“I get to be paid to ski every day. And I can ski with different people every day. . . . I get to roll into the lift line and put my arm up and say, ‘Single!’ and watch all the people in the line look over and go, ‘Dude! That’s Picabo! Should we ride up with her?’ ”

Park City won’t be the same with Street in its corner, of that there is no doubt.

But there’s another reason she took the gig: home-snow advantage, which she hopes will give her an edge in her quest to win the bronze.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

SKI REPORT

This report is furnished by the Associated Press. Be advised that skiing conditions change constantly as the result of weather factors and skier use.

Thursday’s Measurements

CALIFORNIA

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Ski Areas New Base Alpine Meadows -- 42-84 Badger Pass -- 24-36 Bear Valley -- 38-40 Big Bear Mountain -- 18-36 Boreal Mountain -- 54-72 Dodge Ridge -- 17-38 Donner Ski Ranch -- 45-50 Heavenly -- 30-66 June Mountain Resort -- 12-36 Kirkwood -- 60-98 Mammoth Mountain -- 36-60 Mountain High -- 18-36 Mount Shasta -- 23-57 Northstar-at-Tahoe -- 25-60 Sierra at Tahoe -- 24-72 Ski Homewood -- 19-64 Snow Summit -- 12-24 Snow Valley 24-28 Soda Springs Resort -- 36-60 Squaw Valley USA -- 25-66 Sugar Bowl -- 50-72 Tahoe Donner -- 30-49

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COLORADO

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Ski Areas New Base Arapahoe Basin 1 40 Aspen -- 26-33 Aspen Highlands -- 30-38 Beaver Creek -- 26-38 Berthoud Pass -- 45 Breckenridge -- 39-54 Buttermilk -- 23-22 Copper Mountain -- 45 Crested Butte -- 28-29 Cuchara Mountain -- 24 Eldora Mountain 1 36 Howelsen -- 24 Keystone 1 38 Loveland 6 43 Monarch -- 36 Powderhorn -- 20 Purgatory -- 39 Silver Creek Resort 1 29 Ski Cooper -- 31-33 Snowmass -- 28-42 Steamboat 3 43-45 Sunlight 27 Telluride 42 Vail -- 38-48 Winter Park 1-1 47-58 Wolf Creek -- 67-74

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UTAH

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Ski Areas New Base Alta -- 52 Beaver Mountain -- 32 Brian Head -- 47 Brighton -- 48 Elk Meadows -- 38 Park City Resort -- 45 Powder Mountain -- 40 Snowbird -- 51 Solitude Mountain -- 43

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