Something that called my attention
Emphasis is mine
HoustonChronicle.com -- http://www.HoustonChronicle.com | Section: John P. Lopez
Feb. 15, 2006, 11:52PM
Crash and yearn to risk it again sums up Kildow
By JOHN P. LOPEZ
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle
TURIN, Italy — It was the first gray day of the Winter Games, the famous "Turin Fog" settling
over the San Sicario range.
It blurred the line between snow and sky, the blue from the edge of the Fraiteve course blending into mist and fog.
It gave the women's downhill course a pronounced look of doom and made it difficult to tell where the run ended and perhaps a painful destiny for American downhiller Lindsey Kildow began.
She did not need to do this. Some within the U.S. Skiing Federation wished she wouldn't. But Kildow pushed the ends of her skis out of the start house, tucked and came out low, her ski poles pressed against her sides.
She focused on the mountain on which she had bounced and tumbled in an ugly training crash just 48 hours earlier.
Kildow's ponytail flapped under her helmet. She dug the edges of her skis into the slope. She leaned hard into turns, unable to hear the voices below shouting, bravo.
And she stuck the landing square in the middle of that treasured book of Olympic moments. Kildow wasn't trying to do anything special Wednesday, but that's what made it exactly that.
It is the melting of a gray day as much as it is gold, silver or bronze. It's the feeling as much as the show.
"There is not a medal that can represent what she has done," bronze medalist Anja Paerson said of Kildow. "I give her all my applause."
Austria's Alexandra Meissnitzer said Kildow must have "magic knees."
And something inside that not everyone gets.
When Kildow streaked past the same ridge that cost her Monday, she came eye-to-eye with that vague, unspoken feeling of fear and determination that haunting crashes like hers always bring. She severely bruised her hips and shoulders in the crash Monday. She strained her back, after losing her balance then falling, her legs splitting awkwardly in different directions. And she banged her head hard on the icy snow.
"I was a little nervous, I'm not going to lie," Kildow said. "Once I got past that point, I was pretty relieved. It wasn't in my mind until I came over the rolls and then it was just, OK, be careful."
Kildow, 21, was destined to be an Olympic star long before she clocked the 1:57.78 on Wednesday. She will win medals all over the world. Her eighth-place finish in the downhill — just .65 seconds away from bronze — came one day after Kildow woke up in a Setriere hospital.
There was no need for her to prove something. Kildow has been considered America's gold standard for much of the past four years, after finishing sixth in the combined as a 16-year-old in Salt Lake City. American skiing star Picabo Street has called her the toughest girl she knows.
So prove what? Moments before and after racing, her back was stiff and she had to lean on her ski poles from the pain in her legs.
Kildow will make her way to an Olympic podium, for certain. She will get her fame, if not in her remaining events here, then at the Vancouver Games of 2010 and perhaps beyond.
When she told reporters: "Pain was something that I was going to take, no matter what. It was just a matter of whether my body could physically withstand the forces of the speed," she wasn't trying to capitalize on her misfortune.
She wasn't trying to turn the global exposure of the Games into a personal martyrdom. In Kildow's ambitious Alpine world, it's the way it must be or else success never will come.
Sure, Kildow put on a brave display that drew comparisons to the great Hermann Maier winning downhill gold just four days after crashing similarly in Nagano in 1998.
But like Maier, the thing that made Kildow decide to compete in front of a billion people was the same thing that makes her compete when the world is not watching.
The greatest competitors work this hard, focus this much and are this determined when no one is watching. That is how they become great. They beat back the uncertainties every day of their careers, on empty slopes during practice runs and faraway World Cup races that only find the small type back home.
So when they do it on a stage like this, viewers and competitors often consider it an incredible feat. But they don't know any other way.
"It would have been dangerous for me to ski today without confidence," Kildow said. "I believed in myself and I think that's a lot of the reason why I pushed myself into going today.
"I'm happy I raced. It wasn't really the outcome I wanted, but it was as good as can be expected."
Teammates and coaches throughout the sport have known for years the unique combination of talent and will inside Kildow. When the rest of us watched her speed down a mountain from which two days earlier she was taken away lying in a medical helicopter, we marveled.
She did what great Olympians do. She refused to let that crash define her.
john.lopez@chron.com
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