article by Nicola Pucci
Between December 9, 1994when he won for the first time on the Canadian snows of Lake Louise, and February 29, 1996when he achieved the last of his nine World Cup victories in Narvik, Norway, Picabo Street was undoubtedly the fastest downhill racer on the planet.
In fact, this girl was born on April 3, 1971 in the village of Triumph, Idaho, and whose name, in the Shoshoni language, means “sparkling water“, she knows how to make skis run like no one else in the worldand after having made his debut in the main alpine skiing circuit in the 1992/1993 season, already taking a silver medal in combined at the 1993 World Championships in Morioka (behind the German Miriam Vogt), has truly confirmed that she is a downhill skier of excellent caliber, adding up, in fact, nine successes in two years and putting the specialty cup on the board in 1995 and 1996the first American sprinter in history to do it in the World Cup (before her only Tamara McKinney had managed it, twice in giant slalom and once in slalom) and forerunner of a dominion in the queen discipline of alpine skiing which in the New Millennium will be the private territory of a legendary champion like Lindsey Vonn.
The Street, which in her first Olympic participation, in Lillehammer in 1994, she came second in the downhillbeaten by another Teutonic, Katja Seizinger, but ahead of the young Italian from Ortisei Isolde Kostner, in her two golden years she won in the downhill and was third in the super-G (this time preceded by Kostner and the Swiss Heidi Zurbriggen, Pirmin’s sister) also at the 1996 Sierra Nevada World Championships, before fate, mischievous, has a hand in it. In fact, on December 4, 1996, during a training session in Colorado, in Vail, Picabo falls disastrously, breaking his femur and the left anterior cruciate ligament, and in addition to the season, as if by magic he also loses his winning inspiration. The future will never be the same again, with one memorable five-circle exception.
In February 1998 we returned to that Japan which five years earlier, in Morioka, had illustrated to the eyes of the world the class of a young American which referred to ancient Indian legends. And in the land of the Rising Sun, despite a miserable and only fourth place obtained this season in the Cortina downhill, the Street has a coup like a true skiing champion in store.
On February 11th the Olympic women’s alpine skiing program opens with the super-G competition, a specialty which, curiously, has the other American Diann Roffe as the holder of a title surprisingly won four years earlier in Lillehammer. And if the underdogs in Japan are to be divided between the Germans Seizinger (winner of the season at Mammoth Mountain, Lake Louise, Val d’Isere and Cortina), Martina Ertl (first at Altenmarkt) and Hilde Gerg (who in 1997 she won the specialty cup), Kostner (reigning world champion), the Frenchwoman Melanie Suchet (in turn triumphant on the “Olimpia delle Tofane“) e l’austriaca Renate Goetschl, at Picabo Street they are not given great chances not only of victory, but also of putting a medal around their neck. Given that in her career, she has never won in super-G and has only two podiums (in addition to the one at the Sierra Nevada World Championships), third in Lake Louise in December 1994 and second in Garmisch the following January.
In Hakuba, on Acid-One, 43 athletes representing 19 countries are ready to compete at 1pm local time, on a splendid sunny day. The first to throw herself off the starting gate is the Norwegian Ingeborg Helen Marken, credited with a time of 1’19″16, but la Street, bib 2despite a risky presented-arm on the hill where two days later Herman Maier will take off in a frightening flight, she is already very fast in the upper part of the track, 35″75, and then scores the best second split time, 1’02″05, and sets a reference time of 1’18″02.
Karen Putzer, who defends the blue colors together with Isolde Kostner, Barbara Merlin and Bibiana Perez, is more than two seconds away, but already the Austrian Alexandra Meissnitzer, bib 5, represents a test to verify the validity of the Street time. The champion from Abtenau, who will dominate the 1999 World Cup, he is very close to the second reading, +0″10, and finally finishes with 7 hundredths of a delay which will earn him the bronze medal. And if also the German Regina Hausl (fourth at +0″25), Heidi Zurbriggen (only 21st), Isi Kostner (no better than 11th at +0″60), Ert and Goetschl (seventh and fifth respectively, with ‘Habsburg, sensational in the central section, who squanders in the final rush the 2 hundredths of advantage timed in the second intermediate) are well behind the American, in a ranking so short as to count 16 downhill skiers in the space of 89 hundredths, Picabo begins to lull the illusion that the dream of a medal, possibly a gold one, can turn into reality.
With bib 11 it’s the turn of public danger number 1, Katja Seizingerwhich passes at +0″56 in the first half time, reduces to +0″36 in the second and catapults to the finish line in 1’18″44, only sixth in the final ranking. And with Hilde Gerg and Melanie Suchet who certainly don’t do better, like Pernilla Wiberg and Carole Montillet who close the athletes of the first group of merit, for the Street it seems really made.
However, it is not a self-respecting Olympic competition if it does not reserve twists and turns until the end, and then that is Austrian Michaela Dorfmeister shows up at the starting gate with bib number 18a 24-year-old Viennese who boasts only one downhill victory in his career (at least until the downhill race at the 1998 Nagano Games) in Sankt Anton am Arlberg on 16 December 1995. And if the first split time doesn’t cause excessive concerns in Picabo, +0″ 41, yeah the second, +0″26, projects the Habsburg towards the podium (Hausl, provisionally third, is at +0″25), before the impeccable shot on the finish line makes Street’s blood freeze in her veins.
The stopwatch shows 1’18″03, or a hundredth of a difference between those who sit among the heroes of Olympia, Picabo Street, and those who win the five-ring glory, Michaela Dorfmeister in fact, will have to go and earn it almost ten years later. In Turin 2006, in fact, the Austrian will win the downhill and super-G. But in Nagano, it was the year 1998, on the Japanese snow the gold medal embellishes the neck Of “sparkling water“.