We Were Hoping Our Guy Had Won

Sometimes, even when standing on hard, sparkling snow, the ground under our feet is not enough.

Sometimes, we just need to look up.

At the toes of a hill so treacherous it is named after a bear, Sunday was one of those times.

On a perfect winter day, America craned its neck toward the pale skies of 9,286 feet and anxiously awaited the arrival of its perfect Olympian.

You couldn’t see him, but he was up there, and he was coming.

Blond hair. Blue eyes.

A girlfriend in a muffler. A sister in a scarf.

Two little kids waving torn bed sheets upon which they had scrawled his name.

Thousands of others clanging cowbells and screaming that name.

Everyone waiting at the bottom of the men’s downhill course for the same thing, the next Tommy Moe, the new Bill Johnson, our own Jean-Claude Killy.

Until, about two minutes later, somebody else showed up.

Guy named Daron Rahlves.

Guy who nearly went flying too fast into the first hill and was nearly tossed into Nevada.

Guy who skittered down the rest of the mountain feeling as controlled as a kid in an inner tube.

America’s brightest hope. The Winter Olympics’ 16th-place finisher.

Jean-Claude Silly.

The hair was a mess. The eyes were wandering.

The girlfriend said, “This must be really hard for him.... “

The sister said, “If only he could have pulled this off .... “

The little kids still cheered, but, bless them, little kids will always cheer.

Everyone else craned their necks back toward 9,000 feet to wait for someone else.

For most of 54 years, we have been waiting for someone else.

“I really wanted to see me standing up there on the podium,” sighed Rahlves.

Didn’t we all.

Our most popular Winter Olympic sport may be figure skating, but the one that makes us scream loudest at the television is downhill.

It is the one winter sport with an American brain.

It’s not skiing, it’s NASCAR.

It’s not a skills contest, it’s a tough-guy competition.

Its participants are the wide receivers who go across the middle, the baserunners who break up the double play, the small forward who takes the charge.

Sunday’s winner, Fritz Strobl of Austria, flew nearly naked at more than 80 mph.

In his spare time, he’s a cop.

At 6 feet 1 and 203 pounds, he is also a linebacker.

We wished he was our cop, our linebacker.

Every four years, we want one of our guys to win this race so bad, we promise to change their lives if they do.

Just ask Bill Johnson. In 1984 in Sarajevo, he won a gold medal, America’s first medal ever in this discipline.

Then ask Tommy Moe. In 1994, in Lillehammer, he won our second gold medal.

Both men became enormously famous. But both men were enormously drained.

The race was bigger than either of them, the aftermath was bigger than both, sapping them of their best skiing in ways more mental than physical.

Neither won a major race again.

Before Sunday, America had still won only two of the 43 medals awarded in the sport.

That count is now two of 46.

“Skiing has to be like fabric, like cloth,” said Gigele Elon, an Austrian ski instructor who, with buddies, was serenading Sunday’s gold and bronze medalists.

A race that fits Western Europeans like a bodysuit was once again hanging from our best guy like a borrowed snowsuit.

On the 5-foot-9 Rahlves, it fit like a pair of borrowed sport pants.

Moments out of the chute he was in first place, flying toward that first hill.

Flying far too fast. Trying far too hard.

“Then I took the pressure off one ski, and I was tossed about 20 feet,” he said. “The rest of the run, I was fighting myself.”

Oddly enough, it was a run lost not on icy snow, but perhaps on smooth green felt.

The night before the race, Rahlves was playing pool with teammate Marco Sullivan.

“While we were playing, we heard his name on TV about six times,” said Sullivan. “That’s a lot of pressure. I wonder if he felt that pressure.”

Of course they mentioned his name. Rahlves finished fifth in the downhill in the 2001 World Championship. While he won the super-giant slalom in the same meet, that event has only been in the Olympics since 1988, so the downhill garnered all the attention.

“I think I had it easier today,” Sullivan said. “So much less pressure.”

Indeed, he surprisingly finished ninth, the best for an American.

“I don’t know about pressure,” said Rahlves, 28. “I didn’t feel any different going up there.”

Sure. But the problem was in coming down.

“Some people may say I pushed it too hard,” he said. “But I’d rather go up there and hammer it then come down here and feel I could have done something more on my run.”

The sentiment is a good one. But the reality is that a country 40 times smaller than ours-- Austria--continues to produce five times as many good skiers.

“But we are born with skis,” said Austria’s Elon.

While we, apparently, are born to desperately chase them.

The faster we go, the harder we fall.

But fret not, you skiing fans who spent Sunday with your hands over your eyes. It may be safe to remove them today when we have a chance to win our fifth women’s downhill medal in 54 years.

Say Picabo.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com