SAN SICARIO FRAITEVE, Italy – A man in a red and white ski suit called Lindsey Kildow aside Wednesday afternoon.
“That was amazing,” Herbert Mandl, the Austrian women’s ski coach, told her.
“Thanks,” said Kildow, who tied for eighth in the women’s downhill 48 hours after being hospitalized because of a horrific crash that almost knocked her out of the 2006 Winter Games.
Mandl’s protege, Michaela Dorfmeister, won her first Olympic gold medal in a fitting end to the career of one of history’s great skiers. But Kildow gained everyone’s admiration just by leaving the starting gate.
The Olympics seem to draw out the kind of inspiration that leads to remarkable achievements. Anyone watching Kildow, 21, would have been as awestruck as her fellow competitors.
“I wanted to do it even if I didn’t do well,” she said. “I just had to try; it’s the Olympics.”
She performed better than expected on the 2-mile downhill course with the backdrop of the snowy French Alps making San Sicario one of the most picturesque venues of the Turin Games. Kildow couldn’t have been more pleased.
“If I can get eighth place with that kind of energy level and stiffness in my back, hopefully with super-G I will be closer to 90 percent,” she said of her event Sunday.
But first is Friday’s combined. Said Kildow: “I’m going to go for it. I’m going to do whatever I can to be there.”
Kildow, who lives in Vail, Colo., didn’t know whether she would be at the gate when she went to sleep Tuesday night. But in the morning she felt good to go. More than dealing with the pain, the effort was important mentally.
“I think it is great for her to get the demons out of the way,” said her companion, Thomas Vonn, a former ski racer. “She needed to do this.”
Carole Montillet-Carles, the reigning Olympic downhill champion, did as well. She also crashed during Monday’s training run, leaving her with plum-colored bruises on a swollen face. Montillet-Carles was 28th, but happy to survive the bumpy course. Trainers had to tape open her left eye.
On her way up on the chairlift, a fan screamed, “I love you, Carole,” Montillet-Carles recounted.
“Have you seen this face?” she shouted back.
The French skier just couldn’t stay in her room and watch the downhill, so she “clenched her teeth” and bore the pain. Kildow could relate. Her body throbbed all day. At the starting gate, she told herself, “Don’t think, just go.”
Readjusting her left hand on the pole, Kildow flew out of the gate. When she approached the place where she crashed, she raced conservatively. It was enough to end any chance of winning a medal.
She doesn’t remember much about the crash in which she did the splits and hit her head on the icy slope before skidding to a stop. Kildow recalled flying off course and looking at the gate she had just passed. “All I know is my skis weren’t going in the direction they were supposed to be going,” she said. With the snow blending into the sky in tough skiing conditions, racers struggled Wednesday. A handful veered off course before Kildow went. She didn’t see them. “I never watch,” she said.
Dorfmeister, who plans to retire after the season, skied smoothly off the banked turns and into the winner’s circle. She is Austria’s first female downhill gold medalist since the Lake Placid Games in 1980.
The skier lost the gold medal in the super-G to Picabo Street eight years ago by one hundredth of a second. This time, she was well ahead of silver medalist Martina Schild of Switzerland and bronze winner Anja Paerson of Sweden.
Kildow trailed by 0.29 of a second after the first split. She kept losing time, finishing in 1 minute, 57.78 seconds, almost 1 1/2 seconds behind Dorfmeister.
But on a day when few expected her to try to race, the result was comforting. She talked about upcoming events with enthusiasm.
“Don’t give up on me yet,” Kildow said.
The way she skied Wednesday, it would be a mistake to do that.
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AP-NY-02-15-06 1814EST
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