Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, February 21, 1992 TAG: 9202210201
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: ALBERTVILLE, FRANCE LENGTH: Long
A GOLD MEDAL GETS AWAY
A GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY vanished like a snowflake in the sun. A loser on the slopes Thursday, the United States still can match its Winter Games record of 12medals if it finishes with a flourish.\ If everything goes right in figure skating, hockey, bobsleds and short track speed skating, the United States could leave the Alps this weekend with a medals record - albeit a devalued one, with three of the eight medals so far coming in new Olympic sports.
The latest gold to get away was in one of the showcase events Thursday.
Slalom skier Julie Parisien, who vowed to take "every risk I can" before Thursday's race, sped to the lead in the first run, then turned cautious and slow as she gave the gift of gold to Austria's Petra Kronberger.
"I knew that I had handed my medal away," Parisien said after a sluggish second run in which she stood lazily back on her skis and failed to build speed over the flatter lower sections.
A wide turn about five gates from the end was the final, critical mistake that dropped her to fourth and kept her from giving the United States its third Alpine medal of the Olympics.
Parisien slammed her ski poles into the ground in anger.
"This is never going to happen to me again, no matter what," she promised, punching each word into her memory. "The pressure's never going to get to me like that again."
That second run was all the more surprising because of Parisien's aggressive, fighting spirit. She lost four teeth in a practice accident last month and wears a cast on her broken left wrist, but she still keeps skiing.
"I've been through so much in the past month, I feel like I'm 40 years old already," said the 20-year-old from Auburn, Maine.
In the giant slalom Wednesday, she slammed face-first into a gate on the first run and came away with a fat lower lip. Yet she left the course saying she was "totally fired up" for the slalom, hoping to become the first American woman since Barbara Cochran in 1972 to win the race.
Parisien certainly looked fired up on the first run, tearing down the course in 48.22 seconds. She blamed a four-hour wait for draining her energy and confidence.
Kronberger had no such problems.
A two-time World Cup overall champion, Kronberger won her second gold medal with a sizzling afternoon run of 44.40 seconds that gave her a total time of 1:32.68.
"I think this run I have only every hundred years," Kronberger said.
Kronberger, who also won the Alpine combined event, edged the Southern Hemisphere's first Alpine medalist, Annelise Coberger of New Zealand, by .42 seconds. Spain's Fernandez Ochoa was third, .05 seconds ahead of Parisien.
The United States also failed to claim a men's speed skating medal for only the fourth time in Olympic history as its three entrants in the 10,000 meters finished back in the pack. Bart Veldkamp of the Netherlands won, upstaging world record-holder Johann Olav Koss of Norway.
The United States earned its eighth medal in short-track speedskating, which is making its debut as a medal sport. Two other U.S. medals also came in new a new Olympic sport - moguls skiing.
World champion Canada won the Olympic women's 3,000-meter short-track relay, with the United States taking the silver and the Unified Team the bronze.
Kim Ki-Hoon won the men's 1,000 in a world-record time of 1 minute, 30.76 seconds, giving South Korea its first gold medal in Winter Olympics history.
Germany has virtually locked up the medals race with 25, including 10 gold. The Russian-led Unified Team has 20 and retains an outside shot of surging to the top with medal possibilities in eight events.
Russian Evgeni Redkine surprised nearly everyone in the 20-kilometer biathlon. The 22-year-old Siberian was a last-minute addition to the Unified Team and a last-minute starter. "The coaches felt younger blood should join the team," he said.
The gamble paid off. Redkine shot clean in his Olympic debut and skied to a 6.4-second victory over Germany's Mark Kirchner, who was trying to sweep all three biathlon events.
The glamour show of the Games, women's figure skating, won't produce a medal for either the Germans or the Russians.
Yamaguchi and Kerrigan, 1-2 entering Friday night's free skate, cap a busy day of big hopes for the United States. The U.S. hockey team faces the Unified Team in the semifinals, the winner guaranteed a gold or silver, and the four-man bobsled takes off for its first day of runs without Herschel Walker.
Those events could produce four U.S. medals. Cathy Turner has a good shot for a fifth medal in the women's 500-meter short track speed skating Saturday. And even if the U.S. hockey team loses today, it could still win a bronze Saturday.
Greg Brown was back at practice for the U.S. hockey team, his swollen, bruised and stiched-up face protected by a Plexiglas visor extending from the helmet to the chin.
He shrugged off the blindside check by Sweden's Mats Naslund that sent him to the hospital with a broken nose and concussion.
"Part of hockey," Brown said. "I saw it on replay and it didn't look that vicious. It didn't look dirty to me. I probably braced for a low check and he got me high."