Oh Say, Can You Ski?

The international skiing community used to view the United States as the red, white and you? It would burn the Austrians that Americans could slip-slide into every Olympics and steal an Alpine medal or two, or four, while world cameras were rolling.

Bill Johnson’s downhill win at the 1984 Sarajevo Games? Run of luck.

Tommy Moe, a decade later, claiming gold in Norway? OK, so Thor caught lightning in a bottle.

Europeans loved to reiterate apres ski that real racers were judged on long-haul performances on the months-long World Cup circuit grind.

The news on the upslope of these 2006 Turin Games: Uncle Sam isn’t sneaking up on anyone. Austria still rules, but it has company.

“I think they’re looking at us now,” says Patrick Riml, the U.S. women’s Alpine coach.

“They see what’s happening. We’re getting closer to the Austrians.”

Riml should know. He is Austrian, hired away from the superpower ski team in 2002 to sprinkle his snow secrets on American soil. “We want to be No. 1 and I think it’s a realistic goal in the future,” Riml says.

So, how’s it going?

Bode Miller, not an Austrian -- some American coaches probably wish he was -- is the reigning World Cup overall champion.

In 2003, speed-racer Daron Rahlves won the world’s most prestigious downhill, at Kitzbuehel, on Austrian soil.

“I change when I go to that place,” Rahlves says of Alpine’s Shangri-La. “I feel something I don’t feel anywhere else.”

Austria still is top shelf in the cabinet of Nation’s Cups, the annual indicator of country strength, but this season, the United States is second, ahead of Italy, Switzerland, Sweden, Canada and France.

The U.S. is promoting this Olympic team as its best ever and has set a target of eight Alpine medals in Turin.

Eight would be more medals than the U.S. has won in the last three Winter Games combined.

“In terms of depth, we’re as strong as we have ever been,” U.S. Alpine director Jesse Hunt says.

Being the strongest U.S. team may not sound like much.

After a five-medal haul at Sarajevo, the U.S. took a bagel at the 1988 Calgary Games, picked up two in ’92 at Albertville and rode into Lillehammer as a projected laughingstock, Sports Illustrated famously referring to the contingent as “Uncle Sam’s lead-footed snowplow brigade.”

The Americans shocked the snow world by winning four medals, two of them gold, but have eked out only three medals in two Olympics since -- Picabo Street’s 1998 gold in super-giant slalom and Miller’s two Salt Lake City silvers.

This year, America appears loaded for ware at Sestriere.

U.S. hopes begin with its Fab Four:

* Miller. He’s 28, controversial and not quite on top of his game this season, yet he has the potential to win medals in all five Alpine disciplines: downhill, super-G, giant slalom, slalom and combined. Miller has won 20 World Cup races and is a four-time world champion.

The question with Miller is what he might say -- or do -- next.

* Rahlves. He’s a workmanlike veteran who, at 32, is looking to cap a terrific career with an Olympic medal -- the only thing missing from his stash. He has won nine World Cup downhill races -- three this year -- and three in super-G.

Rahlves is a former world champion in super-giant slalom and has, late in his career, added giant slalom to his talents. He may be the most respected skier in the program.

* Lindsey Kildow. The 21-year-old from Vail, Colo., announced her arrival last season with a World Cup downhill win at Lake Louise, Canada, and continues to impress, having won two more downhill races this season. She’ll be one of the favorites in that event, and the combined, in Turin.

* Julia Mancuso. The 21-year-old bookend star to Kildow, Mancuso first made a name for herself by winning two bronze medals at last season’s world championships in Bormio, Italy. Mancuso, who grew up skiing in Rahlves’ backyard at Squaw Valley, got off to a slow start this season but rallied before the Olympics by posting her first World Cup podium finishes with second-place postings in consecutive races at Cortina, Italy.

There’s also depth at all positions.

Ted Ligety, 21, who had never finished better than 10th in a World Cup slalom before this season, has three top-three finishes. By late January, he ranked third in the World Cup slalom standings, ahead of Austrian superstar Benjamin Raich.

Erik Schlopy, the oldest ski team member at 33, has battled injuries but, as recently as 2003, scored a bronze medal in giant slalom at the world championships.

In late January, Scott Macartney, 28, earned his first World Cup podium finish, a second place in super-G in Germany, a day after 23-year-old Steve Nyman had posted a career-high fourth -- behind three Austrians -- in downhill.

The men’s team is so deep, it is planning a “race-off” in training runs to determine who fills the fourth slot for the Feb. 12 Olympic downhill -- a nerve-wracking process usually reserved for the Austrians.

“A cool thing to look at is also that we are doing that,” Nyman says. “We have a deep enough team to where we are battling for spots, which we really haven’t been able to do in the past.”

On the women’s side, veteran Kirsten Clark has more than 30 top-10 World Cup finishes, most of them in downhill, and 30-year-old Kristina Koznick is a six-time World Cup winner with two top-five slalom finishes this season.

Even injury-plagued Libby Ludlow has rebounded to become a threat in super-G, posting her first two top-10 results this.

“Both sides, men and women, have a lot of people who are waiting to strike,” Ludlow said.

Why is the U.S. team so strong now?

Ski team members credit drastic changes in the way the United States Ski Assn. operates.

Many say the program was in such bad shape a decade ago that skiers retired early, leaving no role models for the up-and-comers.

“For Ligety and Jimmy [Cochran], they’re way ahead of where I was when I was 21,” Rahlves says.

Rahlves said the guys he looked up to -- Moe, AJ Kitt and Kyle Rasmussen -- all left the program before he could benefit from their wisdom.

“Tommy had a lot more in him but he was just over it,” Rahlves says of the 1994 Olympic downhill champion. “... Those three guys could have gone for another two seasons, at least, and been competitive, but they weren’t getting the support they needed from the team.”

Rahlves said Bill Marolt, named chief executive of the USSA in 1996, deserved credit for bringing an organized plan to the Alpine team.

“I think it’s just mapped out a lot better than it was,” Rahlves says.

Improvements in traveling conditions and training have allowed skiers to stay on the circuit longer.

Schlopy, for instance, was 19 when he joined the U.S. team.

“The oldest guys on the team were 21, and they were the veterans,” he says.

Today, the core of the U.S. men’s team is from 28 to 33.

“They were devaluing guys getting older,” Schlopy says of past practices. “Now, the ski team is starting to realize, ‘Wow, guys can win their first World Cup at 30.’ ”

Young racers such as Ligety, Cochran and Nyman can now benefit from experience.

Cochran says training with Miller and Rahlves is “a great benchmark -- those guys make the team what it is. They’re stars. They’re the best skiers in the world.”

Rahlves says the U.S. program has also improved in the areas of sports science, technical advances and video capabilities.

Maybe the most important factor, skiers say, is that the U.S. team finally started treating them as adults.

Miller and Rahlves, who make lots of side money in endorsements, are allowed to travel across Europe in their own recreational vehicles.

Years ago, Rahlves says, the U.S. ski team frowned when he asked to fly his girlfriend to Europe while he was on weeks-long World Cup stretches.

“It was like, ‘Please, Coach, can I have Michelle over for two weeks?’ ” Rahlves says.

They are now married and spend weeks together on the World Cup circuit.

“The team has allowed us to kind of live our lives as well as we can,” Rahlves says. “The Euros can do that, they can be home with their girl or wife for a couple days and get back. And we’re stuck.”

Rahlves calls it “common sense” stuff.

It wasn’t by accident.

Men’s coach Phil McNichol says it was a mistake that the ski team once tried to make all skiers fit the same program.

“And it didn’t work, for a lot of people,” says McNichol, who joined the staff in 1997. “It was more of a cookie- cutter kind of scenario.”

McNichol says a new customized approach has allowed the ski team to “keep many of our athletes into their 30s. We’ve driven success to new heights, in my opinion.”

What it means for the U.S. ski program: It doesn’t have to count as much on the one-hit wonders.

“That’s the great thing about these Olympics,” says Riml, the U.S. women’s coach. “We have a lot of girls that can win a medal.”

It’s not about catching lightning anymore. It’s about catching Austrians.

“We don’t have just one athlete to fear, just the Picabo Street,” Riml says. “We can rely on eight to 10 athletes now. That definitely gets the attention of other nations, of other teams.”