First Is a First for France

It was supposed to be Picabo Street’s day in the downhill, but that obviously wasn’t in the grand plan.

If it was, the race would have gone off as scheduled, on Monday, and Street would have zoomed down the Wildflower course at Snowbasin from the second race position on cold snow.

Instead, the race was pushed to Tuesday, Street got stuck with bib No. 26, a two-hour start delay softened the snow, Street sloshed her way to 16th place and one compelling moment gave way to another.

Street very much wanted to script the ending in the last race of her spectacular career, but, in the end, she couldn’t top the story of France’s Carole Montillet, a downhill underdog who pulled off the run of her life for a ski team still shocked by the loss of superstar teammate Regine Cavagnoud, killed in a freak training accident in October.

Montillet won the women’s downhill from the 11th start position with a time of 1 minute 39.56 seconds. Italy’s Isolde Kostner, one of the favorites, took the silver with a time of 1:40.01 and Renate Goetschl of Austria took the bronze in 1:40.39.

It was a disappointing day for the American speed team, which did not place a racer in the top 10. Jonna Mendes finished 11th to lead the U.S. field, followed by Kirsten Clark at No. 12 and then Street.

Caroline Lalive crashed and did not finish.

Montillet’s victory was the first for a French woman in the Olympic downhill and her first downhill win.

Had Cavagnoud not been struck down, dying at 31 when she collided with a German ski coach while training on an Austrian glacier, she might have been on the victory stand instead of Montillet.

“I really ran the race for myself,” Montillet said in French through an interpreter, “but I know that she [Regine] helped me because she was with me.”

Street didn’t think it was coincidence. “If you’re paying attention, God doesn’t work in mysterious ways, he works in strategic ways,” Street said. “He did today what he needed to do.”

Street happily accepted this trade-off. Though she desperately wanted to steal a medal in her last competitive race, and give the home-country fans something to scream about, Street ultimately got out with what she wanted most: her health and her life.

“I can’t imagine having to ski after losing one of my teammates,” Street said of Montillet’s feat. “I don’t even know if I could do it.”

Downhill racers play a devil’s dance, and Street had dipped close to the fire, nearly losing it all in a horrendous crash in Switzerland in 1998.

She made it all the way back from that spill, and a 16th-place Olympic finish in that context set her free.

“It was worth making the comeback just to be here,” said Street, a silver medalist in the downhill in 1994 and gold medalist in the super-G in 1998. “I have no regrets. If I died and came back tomorrow, I’d do it all over again and I’d do it exactly the same way.”

Maybe things do happen for a reason, because there was a certain magic in Montillet’s run and no Earthly inkling that it was going to happen.

Montillet was ranked only 15th in the World Cup downhill standings.

Kostner certainly didn’t see it coming.

“I know at the Olympics there is always an element of surprise,” Kostner said, “but I didn’t think of her in that sense.”

To say that Cavagnoud’s death has affected Montillet would be understatement. The tragedy has hung like a dark cloud over the French team. Montillet said she became suffocated by the harping of journalists who injected the memory of Regine into every conversation about her and the team.

“Whatever I did, the reference was always made to Regine’s accident,” she said. “Everything was simply referred back to that. That was very, very difficult for me because I was beginning to feel as if I was losing my own identity. Then, I really got fed up. I had enough of it.”

Montillet retreated from the public eye. She dodged journalists, up to and through the Olympic downhill training runs. At one point before the Olympics she sought refuge in San Diego, of all places, in an attempt to escape.

Now what?

“I know I’m going to be a public figure from now on,” Montillet said, “but I’m not going to say yes to everybody.”

The story lines of Street and Montillet overshadowed a downer day for Team USA, which was expected to contend for a medal.

Lalive did not take advantage of her No. 2 start position, caught an edge and crashed, suffering more damage to her pride than her body.

Lalive, 22, is a promising star, yet her ski-out almost mirrored her crash at last year’s world championships at St. Anton.

“I don’t want it to be a pattern,” Lalive said of her struggles in big races, “but maybe it’s something I need to look at, how I approach major events.”

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Women’s Medal Runs

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