Chills and Spills

In that gasp of a moment, Lindsey Jacobellis went from golden to ruins, flying through the air with a snowboarder’s twist, then suddenly tumbling to the ground.

The image of Jacobellis letting certain victory slip away in an Olympic snowboard race last week might seem a metaphor for the U.S. team.

The American squad has suffered from one high-profile gaffe after another at the 2006 Turin Games.

Bode Miller has skittered to defeat in his first three ski races. An injured Michelle Kwan had to withdraw before the start of figure skating. Even the U.S. women’s hockey team, historically a lock to make the gold-medal game, fell short.

Yet, with many of its stars floundering through the first week of competition, the U.S. team remains on pace to have its second-best Winter Olympics and reach what experts consider to be an impressive medal count.

“We feel good about where we are,” said Darryl Seibel, a U.S. Olympic Committee spokesman. “We’re up there with perennial Winter Olympic powers.”

Through Sunday, the Americans ranked behind only Norway and Germany with 13 medals. They are tied with Germany for most golds with seven.

If their performance has seemed disappointing, it might be because they arrived in Turin under the weight of heightened expectations, thanks to an unprecedented haul at the 2002 Salt Lake City Games.

The team came away from those Olympics with 34 medals, a quantum leap from its previous high of 13 in 1994 and 1998.

A large part of the 2002 success could be attributed to the idiosyncrasies of winter sport, in which the home team benefits not only from crowd support, but also from familiarity with conditions.

All regulation indoor basketball courts have wooden floors with 10-foot hoops at each end. But each mountain is different, with different slopes and types of snow, and each outdoor sliding course has unique characteristics.

So the USOC, despite hiking its budget 10% to about $36.5 million for Turin, declined to make any predictions before these Olympics. It was left to sports experts to declare that the team needed to win 25 or more medals to show continued improvement.

That message got through to the athletes.

“As much as we tried to downplay it, there was no denying the pressure,” said Bud Keene, a U.S. snowboard coach. “We talked about it.”

Things got off to a bad start with Kwan’s withdrawal from women’s figure skating. Shortly thereafter, Johnny Weir put himself in position to finish among the top three in the men’s competition only to botch his long program. He blamed a lack of inner peace and a malfunctioning aura.

The U.S. wasn’t doing any better in another top winter sport -- Alpine skiing.

On the second day of competition, Miller finished fifth in the downhill. Though his time was only 0.11 of a second short of the podium, it was a failure in a marquee event.

Perhaps the most scrutinized athlete of these Games, Miller subsequently missed a slalom gate while leading in the combined and, on Saturday, veered out of control after hitting another gate in the super-giant slalom.

Daron Rahlves, a fellow star on a ski team that bills itself as “Best in the World,” also had problems.

“It’s pretty poor right now,” Rahlves said. “I think [the men] should have been able to medal in every event.”

But, even as top female skier Lindsey Kildow suffered an injury during a practice run, the team got an unexpected lift when Ted Ligety came from behind to win the combined. He is the only U.S. Alpine skier -- male or female -- to reach the podium so far.

Snowboarding has fared much better.

Keene, the coach, admits to being worried when he saw Shaun White, a favorite in the men’s halfpipe, grow nervously quiet before the event. And when he noticed anxious body language from Hannah Teter, his top women’s halfpipe rider.

Both came through with gold-medal performances.

“They rode like champs,” he said. “They were poised and killing it.”

In the men’s moguls, Toby Dawson nailed two 720 aerials to win bronze. American speedskaters Chad Hedrick, Joey Cheek and Shani Davis won gold in rapid succession.

“You’ve got to be tough,” Davis said after his victory in the 1,000 meters Saturday night. “People are skating really well, and you’ve got to go out there and know you’re a tough dude.”

Part of the challenge facing the Americans is a greater depth of international talent. Consider the women’s hockey team, which lost to Sweden in a semifinal. Turin will mark the first time the U.S. players will miss a gold-medal game since their sport joined the Olympic program in 1998.

“I look at our record against Sweden and Finland and they were close hockey games,” defenseman Angela Ruggiero said. “Unfortunately, we ended up on the wrong end of the stick.”

That was what Seibel, the USOC official, meant when he said: “We knew this was going to be the most competitive Winter Olympics ever. We knew that nothing was going to be handed to us.”

Through the first week, 23 nations won medals, including nontraditional winter competitors such as Australia and China. Estonia had three golds.

Such is the predicament facing American athletes with a week of competition remaining in their big test, trying to prove that they can be a consistent force in the snow and on ice. Their task has been filled with ups and downs.

For Hannah Kearney, a favorite in the women’s moguls, that meant wobbling down the hill and failing to qualify for the final. She insisted it was “not the end of the world,” then melted into tears.

But more than a third of the medals are yet to be presented -- many for events in which the U.S. is expected to contend for a place on the podium. The Americans are within reach of 25 medals.

Miller still has two more races, ski team officials say. Sasha Cohen is still a favorite in women’s figure skating.

Even Jacobellis recovered from her internationally televised embarrassment.

After falling to the snow, she hurriedly pushed herself up and glided across the finish line in her snowboard cross final.

“The good news out of that was everyone didn’t pass me,” she said. “Only one person passed me, so I got the silver.”

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Testing their medals

The United States has won five fewer medals in this year’s Winter Olympics than it had at the same point in Salt Lake City in 2002.

U.S. medal count after nine days of competition

2006

Gold - 7

Silver - 4

Bronze - 2

Total - 13

2002

Gold - 4

Silver - 7

Bronze - 7

Total - 18

-

Source: Times reports

*

Half empty

U.S. skier Bode Miller is among the Olympic disappointments so far. He again failed to medal Saturday, crashing into a gate and going off the course in the super-giant slalom.

1. Miller veers off line in a section of the course known as Acqua Minerale, or “mineral water.”

2. He plows into a gate and goes outside the blue lines marking the course.

3. Miller struggles on one ski to regain his balance before abandoning the race.

-

Sources: Torino 2006; Via Lattea; 3D Data courtesy of Intermap Technologies Inc.; Associated Press; AFP Getty Images