Favorites Wobbled and Fell, New Stars Blazed Down Ice-Slicked Racecourses, and a Magnifico Called

By John Skow

The wildest and most dramatic ride of Olympic ski racing on Mount Allan was Pirmin Zurbriggen's blazing downhill victory on the first day of competition, but that was then. For the next two weeks the Swiss superskier, a likely bet to win a hatful of medals, was most noticeable as he smiled bashfully at cameras and gave gentlemanly praise to racers who were beating him. The expectations game was at least as delusive among the women. Wasn't Michela Figini, the fiery Italian-Swiss who is the sport's best woman downhiller, supposed to repeat her Sarajevo victory? And then claw it out for most of the other medals with her teammate and nonfriend the formidable German-Swiss Maria Walliser?

Somebody lost the script. By the middle of last week it seemed that chambermaids were fighting duels and delivery boys declaiming soliloquies. Not quite; the supporting actors who won were authentic first-seed skiers, delivering the message that there was too much talent for one or two superstars to dominate. Still, the surprise was genuine as West German Marina Kiehl won the downhill and a pair of strong Austrians, Anita Wachter and Sigrid Wolf, took the combined (a parlay of downhill and slalom) and the / super-G (a compressed, curvier downhill). Walliser managed a bronze in the combined and Figini a silver in the super-G, but interest swung to their teammate Brigitte Oertli (two silvers) and to Canada's new hope, Karen Percy. Skiing with a broken left thumb, she took a bronze in the downhill, scraped out a fourth in the combined with her left pole flopping uselessly behind her as she ran the slalom, then took another bronze in the super-G.

Wind-lashed Mount Allan itself upstaged the world's best skiers during the men's super-G. Flat light blurred visibility, and the man-made snow had been licked to unpredictable slickness by overnight freezing. Five of the first 15 racers fell or wobbled off course. Zurbriggen skied so cautiously that he was out of contention. The only racer who looked comfortable was France's Franck Piccard, who had never won a World Cup race although he had looked good earlier in the Games, taking a bronze in the downhill. His expression as the other racers failed seemed to ask, "What do I do now?" Carry the weight of a gold medal was the answer: he was France's first ski hero in several thin years.

Bright sun warmed some of the best ski competition of the Games in the women's and men's giant slaloms. The leader after the women's first run was Blanca Fernandez-Ochoa, a Spaniard (and, reporters told each other happily, a sometime bullfighter) whose brother Paco won the slalom at the '72 Games in Sapporo. Blanca, a powerful, driving skier, looked so strong that Spanish fans phoned to Calgary for champagne as they waited for the second run.

Hold those corks . . . The early second-run lead went to Switzerland's Vreni Schneider, 23, an all-eventer who is strongest in slalom and GS. She is tied for the World Cup point lead with Figini. Schneider had accomplished nothing so far in the Games, and she was discouraged. Earlier, the Swiss coaches had yanked her out of the super-G lineup. She had been tight on her first GS run. She told herself to "do something fantastic or get out of racing. I went for it."

U.S. Star Tamara McKinney, who broke her leg three months before, fell on the first run. Two other convalescing U.S. skiers, Diann Roffe and '84 Olympic GS Gold Medalist Debbie Armstrong, could do no better than twelfth and 13th. Now came Fernandez-Ochoa. "I already felt the medal in my pocket," she said later between sobs. It must have been her hotel key, because she charged too hard and fell 20 sec. into the run. Her tumble gave Schneider the gold. The silver went to a sentimental favorite, Christa Kinshofer-Guthlein , 27, of West Germany, who won a silver in slalom eight years before at Lake Placid.

Next day came the men, or to put things accurately, the man. There seemed to be only one skier on the hill. Austrian Hubert Strolz, the combined gold medalist, skied superbly, and Zurbriggen only a little less so. They finished second and third. After the commanding first run by Alberto Tomba, the 21- year-old Italian now universally known as La Bomba, it never seemed possible that he would lose. He did not. Tomba is a big, curly-haired, laughing fellow, winner of seven World Cup races already this season, who seems too tall and bulky to be the world's best gate skier. But he is unusually agile and strong, and -- this is hard to express adequately -- confident. Earlier, when he caught an edge and bomba'd out of the super-G, this amazing man, unworried, said, "My resurrection is near."

Yes, indeed. Weekend skiers could see the astonishing downward and outward force that his thighs exerted in turns, just as he shifted weight from ski to ski. La Bomba calls himself the "greatest" and resembles a pair of young lovers holding hands, except that there is just one of him. It is impossible to take offense. The new phenom announced happily that his rich father would buy him a Ferrari for his win, and no one seemed to mind.

Last came two days of slaloms, short, twisting, violent races. Racers wearing heavily padded gloves and shin protectors charge straight at hinged flag gates and bash them aside. Schneider took a slim lead after the first run but fretted that she had been too passive. She is a country mouse from the tiny village of Elm, who at 13 quit school and competitive skiing to keep house after her mother died. She lists her hobby as knitting. Now she psyched herself into a fury, slugged gates like a boxer on her second run and won her second gold, ahead of Yugoslavia's Mateja Svet. Only four other women alpine skiers in history have won two golds in the same Games. Now, on the powerful Swiss team, she was first among equals.

For a few misty moments next day it seemed that the lead of Sweden's 31- year-old Ingemar Stenmark, greatest male skier of his time, would hold up in the snow-blurred second run of the men's slalom. Then the astonishing Tomba, third after the first run, swiveled down the course to first place and his second gold, ahead of West Germany's Frank Woerndl and another elderly gent, Liechtenstein's 30-year-old Paul Frommelt. Stenmark slipped to fifth. What now for La Bomba, two Ferraris? How do you say vroom-vroom in Italian?

With reporting by Laura Lopez/Nakisaka