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Picabo Street

Los Angeles Times

Alpine skiing

You don’t win an Olympic gold medal 14 months after undergoing reconstructive knee surgery and not have down days.

Even peppy Picabo Street came to understand that.

She hit her low point last September, six months before she came here and kick-started the whited-out Nagano Games by winning gold in the super-giant slalom - not even her best event.

Last fall, Street had gone to Chile to train with the U.S. ski team, pretending her knee was fine and that she could pick up where she’d left off - as the world’s top female downhill skier.

Street’s repaired left knee, in fact, was so distressed that a decision was made to take her off skis, put her back in rehabilitation and vastly lower her expectations.

The job of talking Street down from the starting gate fell to George Capaul, one of the U.S. coaches.

“I was sitting on the side of the course watching all my teammates train and I’m crying because I can’t train,” Street said a few hours after winning her gold medal. “And I’m listening to a coach who thinks I’m asking too much of myself, No. 1, to start the World Cup season on time, No. 2, to be anywhere in contention in the World Cup season and, thirdly, expecting a miracle to come to Nagano to win a medal.

“I don’t think he was trying to detour me from the challenge, he was just trying to put in perspective how large of a challenge I had just stepped into.”

As late as November, there were doubts Street would be ready for the World Cup season, let alone a contender for an Olympic medal. She did not make her World Cup debut until Dec. 17 at a super-G in Val d’Isere, France.

That Picabo finished 11th, however, pretty much showed where her mind was.

Suddenly, Street is the favorite to win Friday’s Olympic downhill.

If she finishes in the top three, she will become the first U.S. Alpine skier to have won three Olympic medals.

“I still have too much work here in Nagano. When I get home, actually when I get to Maui, and I’m laying on the beach, I think that’s when I’m going to be spending time reflecting more.”