local weather Click for Sun Valley, Idaho Forecast
 front page
 classifieds
 calendar
 last week
 recreation
 subscriptions
 express jobs
 about us
 advertising info

 sun valley guide
 real estate guide
 homefinder
 sv catalogs
 

 

 hemingway

Produced & Maintained by Idaho Mountain Express, Box 1013, Ketchum, ID 83340-1013 
208.726.8065 Voice
208.726.2329 Fax

Copyright © 2002 Express Publishing Inc.
All Rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of Express Publishing Inc. is prohibited. 

ski and snow reports

Homefinder

Mountain Jobs

Formula Sports

Idaho Conservation League

Westridge

Windermere

Gary Carr...The Carr Man!

Edmark GM Superstore : Nampa, Idaho

Premier Resorts Sun Valley

High Country Property Rentals


For the week of February 13 - 19, 2002

  News

With a kiss, Street says farewell


SNOWBASIN, Utah (AP—With kisses for the crowd and a few tears, Picabo Street said goodbye to ski racing. She left with no final victory—and no regrets.

"If I were to die and come back tomorrow, I'd do it all over again," she said, "and I'd do it exactly the same."

Carole Montillet of France was the surprise winner in the women's downhill at the Salt Lake City Olympics, a race finally run after being postponed by high winds on Monday and delayed for two hours on Tuesday. Two of the prerace favorites, Isolde Kostner of Italy and Renate Goetschl of Austria, won the silver and the bronze.

Street was 16th, the third-fastest American behind Jonna Mendes (12th) and Kirsten Clark (13th).

Still, Street—whose skiing career began of the slopes of Sun Valley’s Bald Mountain—was the show, drawing cheers from a big crowd that appreciated the way she fought back from the worst of a series of severe leg injuries to give it one more Olympic try.

This was why, she explained, she had come back after breaking her left leg and mangling her right knee in a crash at Crans Montana, Switzerland, in 1998, just a month after winning the Olympic gold medal in the super giant slalom.

She couldn't resist an Olympic downhill just an hour's drive from her Park City home, "to end my career in the USA with the crowd cheering louder for me than anybody else."

A star-spangled, red-white-and-blue heart painted on her right cheek, Street kissed the snow at the top of the Wildflower Course, and blew kisses to the big, cheering crowd at the finish. She grabbed a microphone and thanked the crowd and her parents.

"The last four years have been about coming into the finish and hearing the Americans' roar, and see the kids' faces painted with `USA' on them, just the pride of being an American and being an Olympian," she said later.

It was fitting, Street said, that Montillet would win the gold for a French team coping with the death of its star skier, Regine Cavagnoud, in a training accident in October.

"I cannot imagine having to ski losing to any one of my teammates," Street said. "I don't know if I could have done it, to be honest."

But after two Olympic medals, a gold in Nagano and silver in Lillehammer, after nine World Cup titles and so many exhausting comebacks, there would be no more pressure to win, no more fear of injury.

The 30-year-old Street will be married in the fall to ski technician Jerry Mulligan.

"My entire wedding party was here in place today to watch me race my last race," she said.

In a few years, Street plans to start a family. In the near future, she wants to lure more young people into skiing.

Ski racing is over, but the skiing never will be.

"I love skiing. It will be forever in my life," she said. "I look forward to many days out sliding around the mountain, not trying to make some perfect turn and make some perfect line through the gates.

"I'll always be a child on my skis. It will always be fun. It will be a way for me to stay young forever."

 


The Idaho Mountain Express is distributed free to residents and guests throughout the Sun Valley, Idaho resort area community. Subscribers to the Idaho Mountain Express will read these stories and others in this week's issue.