Croatian Is Sensational

It’s not every day you happen upon a conga line of Croatians, on their knees, frolicking like kids in the snow.

Then again, it’s not every day an Alpine skier wins four medals in the same Olympics.

In fact, it had never happened until Friday, when 20-year-old Janica Kostelic of Zagreb made tracks and then history in winning the women’s giant slalom.

Kostelic assured her spot in Bud Greenspan’s next Olympic retrospective with another dominating performance, this time snow-blowing away the competition with a two-run time of 2 minutes 30.01 seconds.

She was 1.32 seconds faster than silver-medal winner Anja Paerson of Sweden and 1.66 ahead of Switzerland’s Sonja Nef, who took the bronze.

Of Kostelic’s performance, Paerson remarked, “I wonder if she’s human.”

Kostelic leaves Salt Lake City with three gold medals and one silver.

She won the combined, slalom and giant slalom events and missed winning the super-giant slalom by five-hundredths of a second.

Reaction to her record-setting performance?

“I’m tired, that’s how I feel now,” she said. “Records are to be beaten, so somebody’s going to beat my record in the next Olympics.”

Fat Croatian chance.

Kostelic made ski racing look ridiculously easy, which it isn’t.

After she raced into first place from the 19th start position in Friday morning’s run, she did one of those Michael Jordan shrugs in the finish area--What can I say? Even I don’t know how I’m doing this.

Kostelic said later that was basically the right read of her actions. She couldn’t believe she had raced ahead of Nef, the world’s top-ranked giant slalom skier.

“I didn’t expect that,” she said. “To be in front of Sonja Nef, it was a big thing.”

Kostelic had never finished higher than fourth in a World Cup giant slalom. She posted that result at Park City in 1998.

No wonder Team Croatia, which consists of Janica, her older brother Ivica, and what appeared to be two-dozen ski “roadies,” danced the day away after her win, bumping and grinding to such disco hits as “Super Freak” and “That’s the Way I Like It.”

The public-address announcer called it a “Croatian get-down party.”

The U.S. women?

Oh yeah, them.

Actually, they finally met expectations at the Olympics, because they were not expected to contend for a medal in giant slalom.

Kristina Koznick, who lost her only real shot at a medal when she crashed in the first run of Wednesday’s slalom, was the top U.S. finisher at 17th.

“Seventeenth just doesn’t do it,” she said.

She ended up 4.21 seconds behind Kostelic’s winning time, which in giant slalom is like finishing a lap back in the mile run.

Koznick now returns to the World Cup tour, where she ranks second in slalom and still has a clear chance to win the World Cup title, a tremendous feat in ski racing but no substitute in the U.S. for Olympic success.

The quick wrap on U.S. fortunes: Sarah Schleper finished 21st, Kirsten Clark was 26th, and Alexandra Shaffer turned out the giant slalom lights on her way down to 28th place.

The U.S. women were held without an Alpine medal for the first time since the 1988 Calgary Games, considered the low point in the Winter Olympic movement for the U.S.

The best showing for the U.S. women here came from 17-year-old Lindsey Kildow, who finished a surprising sixth in the combined and then called “tragic” the fact she had to miss her junior prom to train for the Games.

“The fear of failure overcame the desire for success,” said U.S. women’s coach Marjan Cernigoj, acutely summing up the U.S. effort.

The only question now in two-drink-minimum chalets across the Alps is how to assess Kostelic’s performance.

Does she move straight to the top chairlift in terms of all-time Olympic Alpine achievement?

You have to qualify what she did only because the combined and super-G were not added as events until 1988.

Austria’s Toni Sailer won gold in all three Alpine events at the 1956 Cortina Games, as did France’s Jean-Claude Killy at Grenoble in 1968.

Yet, Kostelic garnered medals in four of the five available disciplines.

She elected not to race the downhill at Snowbasin, but it wasn’t out of trepidation. Rather, she was trying to save wear and tear on her aching knees.

She said she has no regrets not racing all five events.

“I didn’t want to risk,” she said. “I had the combined race in front of me. I was going for the medal. In case something happened, it would have been stupid.”

Kostelic’s performance is more remarkable considering that serious injuries had made her an also-ran on this year’s World Cup circuit.

Kostelic entered the Salt Lake Games ranked No. 30 in giant slalom, No. 14 in super-G, No. 12 in slalom and No. 13 overall.

Because of doubts about her injuries and conditioning, most experts considered her a medal contender only in the combined.

Kostelic was only 19 when she won the World Cup overall title last year, yet she had disastrous results at the 2001 World Championships--she says now she didn’t want to win a medal--and then underwent three operations on her left knee.

There were rumors that Kostelic was going to hang up her skis before her 20th birthday--don’t ski racers of the world wish.

Kostelic is truly a Zagreb-to-riches story. Lacking funds to attend private ski academies, Janica and Ivica were driven town to town by their father, Ante. Sometimes, the family would sleep in the car, or in tents.

Janica has tended to roll her eyes when asked to recount the hardships of youth at post-race news conferences.

Her stock answer is that it wasn’t so hard, and she compared the overnight adventures to “camping.”

Kostelic did say Friday that, with determination and a fast line down the hill, all things are possible.

“It doesn’t really matter where you come from,” she said. “You can be from Fiji or Cameroon. If you train hard and like what you’re doing, you can have success, for sure.”

Kostelic also said that success comes with a price, and that winning four medals made her very, very tired.

“I really need a good massage,” she said.

And a trophy case.

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Queen of the Hill

Janica Kostelic of Zagreb won her fourth medal in Salt Lake, setting the Alpine skiing record for most medals in a single Olympics. Kostelic’s results in Salt Lake:

Giant Slalom...Gold

Slalom...Gold

Combined...Gold

Super-G...Silver