Kostelic Rocks the Joint for Croatia

SNOWBASIN, Utah —  Janica Kostelic is so famous back home in Croatia she has her own postage stamp, so you wonder what they’ll do now that she has won her country’s first Winter Olympic medal.

Kostelic limped into these Olympics with more injuries than a 10-year NFL lineman, yet it didn’t stop her from winning gold Thursday in the women’s combined event.

“This is the first real Croatian medal,” she said, “so I’m real proud of it.”

Because of poor weather, the two slalom runs were run first and a shortened downhill followed in the afternoon, the opposite format of Wednesday’s men’s combined.

It forced Kostelic, known more as a gate racer, to lay down two fast slalom runs and hope she could ski a fast enough downhill to hold off the competition.

Kostelic, 20, surprised herself by posting the third-fastest downhill time and easily won the event with a three-race time of 2 minutes 43:28 seconds, a healthy 1.49 seconds faster than silver medalist Renate Goetschl of Austria. Germany’s Martina Ertl took the bronze with a time of 2:45.16.

“Janica was unbeatable today,” said Goetschl, who won the bronze in the women’s downhill on Tuesday.

Lindsey C. Kildow, a 17-year-old from Vail, Colo., was the highest American finisher at sixth, a somewhat shocking result for a high school junior who came to Salt Lake to get experience.

Kildow is so young she sticks reminder notes on her skis. She scribbled the words “Be determined” on one ski and “Focus and Attack” on the other.

No, she didn’t use a heart to dot the “i” in the word “determined.”

Kildow did admit she had to give up quite a bit to reach this Olympic dream.

“I wanted to go to the prom and things like that but I can’t, and that’s kind of tragic,” Kildow said. “But that’s my life and I like it.”

Kostelic knows that drill. She was only 16 when she finished eighth in combined at the 1998 Nagano Games.

Kostelic is no stranger to victory stands, winning the World Cup overall title last year and eight consecutive slaloms in one stretch, but three operations on her left knee since spring made many wonder whether she’d be a factor at these Olympics.

Kostelic answered that question resoundingly, although she said she is far from 100%.

“I’m not healthy,” she said. “I just say my right arm is OK, and my hair is good too.”

With her win in combined, Kostelic must now be considered a medal contender in all three remaining disciplines: super-giant slalom, giant slalom and slalom.

Janica may not be the only Kostelic to win a medal here, either.

Ivica, her older brother, will be Bode Miller’s biggest threat in slalom next week.

Ivica came from the 64th spot to win a World Cup slalom at Aspen, Colo., in November and he, not Miller, is the current World Cup leader in slalom.

“I hope he is proud of me,” Janica said of her brother, who has not arrived in Salt Lake. “It’s going to be nice if he wins a medal in slalom. That’s everything we need.”

It was another crushing day of competition for American Caroline Lalive, who continues her string of failures in international competitions.

Lalive, who crashed in Tuesday’s Olympic downhill, withdrew from the combined after her first slalom run after ending up 17.85 seconds behind the first-run leader Kostelic.

Lalive was so slow because she missed a gate on the course and had to sidestep up the hill to retrace her tracks.

Lalive, 22, left the corral without comment but left plenty of ammunition for commentary.

She was considered the next rising star on the U.S. team after finishing seventh in the Olympic combined at the 1998 Nagano Games.

Yet, in big races, nothing has gone right since she finished a super-giant slalom at the 1999 Alpine World Championships in Vail.

Since, she has either crashed or not finished in seven consecutive world championship or Olympic races.

After she crashed in Tuesday’s downhill, catching an edge near the bottom of the course in a flub many experts called an unforced error, Lalive said she hoped her failures in big events were not some sort of a pattern.

But she seems to have developed a pattern.

At last year’s 2001 Alpine championship at St. Anton, Lalive appeared poised to win a medal in the combined. She was in second place and trailing Goetschl by only .79 before the final slalom run.

Instead of playing it smart, though, Lalive skied too aggressively and failed to finish.

It was the same old snow story Thursday.

“It was a ski mistake,” U.S. women’s coach Marjan Cernigoj said of Lalive.

“We know she’s a great skier and she will overcome these problems.”

Cernigoj said Lalive will retain her spot in Sunday’s super-G, but that Kildow, based on her performance in combined, will ski in slalom next week at Deer Valley.