Picabo Street celebrates her gold-medal finish
Wednesday in the Super Giant Slalom in Nagano.ASSOCIATED PRESS
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Picabo Street celebrates her gold-medal finish
Wednesday in the Super Giant Slalom in Nagano. ASSOCIATED PRESS |
NAGANO, Japan - She has given America its wake-up call at the Winter Olympics.
Buried under four days of Nagano snow and plenty of sporting slumber, the United States Olympic team finally found its golden way - its Picabo Street - at these Games.
The 26-year old skier with the megawatt personality, rock 'n' roll lingo and flower-child pedigree has given the homeland a champion of heroic proportions. If Street has another day like she did Wednesday, she will walk away - make that hobble - from these games with a reputation that rivals such Olympic standard-bearers as Eric Heiden, Carl Lewis and Mark Spitz.
On Wednesday afternoon, Street left everyone here in awe with her bold run down the women's Super Giant Slalom course in Hakuba. Using her faster, but more dangerous downhill skis, she won the gold medal by one-hundredth of a second over Austria's Michaela Dorfmeister.
At about the same time, skier Jonny Mosely was winning America's other gold medal with a first-place finish in the freestyle moguls.
"This is the story - Jonny Mosely and I created a story for America," Street said Wednesday night. "I really hope everybody in America finally got what they were waiting for. And I'm proud to be the one to deliver."
If you know Street's story, you know this is a special delivery.
Picabo Street of Sun Valley, Idaho, passes a gate on her way to winning the gold medal in the Women's Super-G at the XVIII Olympic Winter Games in Hakuba Wednesday Feb. 11, 1998. (AP Photo) |
"They didn't know Picabo. She's been feisty since the moment she took her first breath," said her dad, Ron "Stubby" Street, a self-described 1960s hippie. "The thing here was that she was challenged. Anytime Picabo is challenged, anything can happen."
That was even more evident Wednesday night when she accepted the gold medal in front of thousands of celebrating people gathered in the cold for a special ceremony in downtown Nagano.
Jean Claude Killy, the famed French skier who won gold at the Grenoble Olympics three decades ago, hung the gold medal around Street's neck, kissed her on both cheeks and, in reference to Saturday's women's downhill, Street's speciality, he whispered, "I'll see you back up here Saturday night."
And then, as the American flag was raised, Street tilted back her head and gave a proud, full-throated version of the national anthem. Before she finished, tears were spilling onto her freckled cheeks.
"My eyes were watering the whole time, but I tried real hard," she said. "I figured if I sang as loud as I could, I wouldn't cry. As I was doing that, I thought about my mom teaching me how to sing the anthem. I made sure I got all the words right, because I guarantee you that back home she was watching my lips."
Four years ago - just before the Winter Games in Lillehammer, Norway - Dee Street taught her daughter the anthem. "I kept getting the ramparts part juggled into the rockets red glare," Picabo admitted.
At Lillehammer, she won a silver medal in the women's downhill and didn't need to sing. "When I was up there in Lillehammer, the whole time I heard the German anthem I couldn't tell you how it sounded or what a single note was because I heard my own anthem in my head. And from that moment on, I yearned and yearned and yearned to hear it.
"This summer, my mom and I practiced some more at the living room piano. And as I sang tonight, I suddenly tripped into 'Wow, I waited so long to hear the national anthem play for me and only me. What a proud moment this is - and only a few people get it.' "
Picabo Street |
"The chance is very high, especially after this," Street said with a straight-forwardness that didn't come off as a boast. "I mean I'm going to be on the same course, where the conditions are the same and where I'm probably on the exact same skis. "
At these Games - where the sequined dolls of figure skating are poised to steal the show and the National Hockey League is about to add its high marquee flex - it's been said American skiing seemed reduced to a lounge act.
But Wednesday, Street took over the Olympic stage. And with the spotlight, you found a story like no other at these Games.
When talking about his free-wheeling past, her dad has said he dropped LSD with Timothy Leary and, to this day, gets up at the exact time his daughter is competing - in Europe that may mean in the middle of the night - to meditate to give her added power.
According to legend, Picabo was conceived in a tent 9,000 feet up in the Sawtooth Mountains. By the time she was three, she had still not been given a first name.
Then came plans for a trip to Mexico, which meant a stop at the passport office. A name was needed and as the little girl played 'peek-a-boo, Ron had a brainstorm. It would be Picabo, but spelled like the town they had visited in Idaho. An Indian word, it meant "shining waters."
But for all the wackiness and whimsy, there is a real no-frills mettle with Street.
As Paul Major, the former coach of the women's team has put it: "The socio-economic reality is that most skiers in this country come from wealthy families. Picabo's situation is different and it's pleasant to be around her. I love to see a kid who worked hard and had a lot of communal support. In the beginning she had neighbors and friends kicking in money to help her go ski."
And Street made the most of it by adding two World Cup championships - becoming the only American skier ever to win the downhill crown - to her Lillehammer silver. "But even back then," her dad said, "she was looking at me and saying, 'Silver is not gold."
And that's why, two months after her Vail accident - "my MCL (medial collateral ligament) and ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) went, my posterior capsulate went, the bottom of my femur fractured," - she was going down the same course in Hakuba on which she won Wednesday.
"I got on my coach's back, just piggy-backed right on, so I could visualize everything," she said."I wanted to set the stage.
"The thing is I believe Mother Nature and God and all the higher powers take care of making sure things in life balance. When something crappy happens to you, usually something good will even it out. It's all about balance."
Until Wednesday the scales had been tipping in one direction. First came the knee injury. Then, 13 days ago, Street had another spill while skiing in Sweden and was knocked unconscious for two minutes.
"It all came around today," she said, "To win by just one-hundredth of a second, you've got to look up and just say 'Thank you!' It's like this was meant to be. This was destiny."
As she spoke, someone pointed out the beautiful full moon above Nagano Wednesday night. Street looked up and nodded, "Ahh.... Bella Luna."
She was singing to herself as she left.
America was awakened by her Olympic tune.
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