Word: zurbriggen
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...wildest and most dramatic ride of Olympic ski racing on Mount Allan was Pirmin Zurbriggen's blazing downhill victory on the first day of competition, but that was then. For the next two weeks the Swiss superskier, a likely bet to win a hatful of medals, was most noticeable as he smiled bashfully at cameras and gave gentlemanly praise to racers who were beating him. The expectations game was at least as delusive among the women. Wasn't Michela Figini, the fiery Italian-Swiss who is the sport's best woman downhiller, supposed to repeat her Sarajevo victory? And then...
Wind-lashed Mount Allan itself upstaged the world's best skiers during the men's super-G. Flat light blurred visibility, and the man-made snow had been licked to unpredictable slickness by overnight freezing. Five of the first 15 racers fell or wobbled off course. Zurbriggen skied so cautiously that he was out of contention. The only racer who looked comfortable was France's Franck Piccard, who had never won a World Cup race although he had looked good earlier in the Games, taking a bronze in the downhill. His expression as the other racers failed seemed...
Next day came the men, or to put things accurately, the man. There seemed to be only one skier on the hill. Austrian Hubert Strolz, the combined gold medalist, skied superbly, and Zurbriggen only a little less so. They finished second and third. After the commanding first run by Alberto Tomba, the 21- year-old Italian now universally known as La Bomba, it never seemed possible that he would lose. He did not. Tomba is a big, curly-haired, laughing fellow, winner of seven World Cup races already this season, who seems too tall and bulky to be the world...
...giant slalom in the second week of the great chinook. He feared they might soften halfway down the mountain under the weight of his incredible confidence. Immediately posting the best time for the first run, Tomba waited only long enough to see that Pirmin Zurbriggen was slower before telephoning home to Bologna (collect). "You have seen Tomba once," he advised his parents. "But now, for the second run, you must turn on all three TV sets and watch Tomba win three times in parallel...
With three trips left to the mountain, regal Zurbriggen expects to rise again. On the Games' penultimate night, Figure Skater Katarina Witt will look to become the queen. At an audience that attracted the most notetakers of the week, the East German champion told her sweet stories in English and German: "I started skating when I was five years old, and my mummy went to the rink with me, and the coach put skates on me. It was quite wet on the ice . . . My mummy said, if I fall, my tights are going to get wet. So maybe that...