Street’s Return From Injury Hampered By Poor Weather

After extra weeks of training, former world downhill ski champion Picabo Street of Sun Valley, Idaho is anxious to begin skiing again.

But the weather won’t cooperate.

Snow, wind and poor visibility Friday forced organizers to reschedule a World Cup giant slalom in which Street and Sweden’s Pernilla Wiberg, the 1997 World Cup overall champion, were to mark their return from injuries. Street, the 1996 world champion and two-time World Cup downhill champ, went down a year ago with a knee injury during training at Vail, Colo. Wiberg was injured two months ago in preseason training in Austria.

“I’m all set. I’m ready to go. I’m just waiting on the weather,” Street said after Friday’s race was postponed. “We’ll train in Tignes and go from there. I’m anxious to get back in there and start racing.” Street, 26, took an extra two weeks before returning. She trained for a week with coaches Andreas Rickenbach and Alex Hoedlmoser at Vail and spent last week with women’s coach Herwig Demschar at nearby Copper Mountain before coming to France.

“It was such good training, and it was just what I needed,” Street said. “Vail and Copper opened the lifts early - sometimes I was done training before the public got there - and we got to do a lot.

“I’d come down the course at Copper and Herwig would be right behind me. He was right there. I couldn’t bluff anything, even if I’d wanted. We’d critique and go back up. It was the best.”

The return of the two ski stars has drawn the expected media interest.

“I’m so glad Pila’s coming back at the same time with me; she’s such a good friend and such a great skier,” Street said. “We were kidding each other about splitting up the journalists and each of us taking half the pack so we didn’t both have to deal with all of ‘em.”

Rain Thursday and the blizzard condition Friday, plus poor snow in Veysonnaz, forced an overhaul of the World Cup schedule. The new lineup calls for a men’s downhill training run this morning and a downhill after lunch.

The women’s schedule includes a World Cup downhill Wednesday, super-G Thursday, giant slalom Friday with slalom and combined, twinning the downhill and slalom results, Saturday.