Canadian Sisters Ski and Soar to 1
KRASNAYA POLYANA, Russia - What are they feeding the Dufour-Lapointe sisters of Canada? Is it some combination of fiber and protein? Can it be packaged and sold at Whole Foods? Is it about to become the most sought-after meal wherever snow and the hypercompetitive children and parents are found?
These are legitimate questions, now that Justine Dufour-Lapointe, who is 19, and Chloe Dufour-Lapointe, who is 22, finished with a gold and a silver medal at the women's mogul competition.
Their older sister, Maxime, 24, did not make it to super final, comprised the top six skiers. But she was in the top 12, and she was on hand to gush and revel along with her younger siblings when the three celebrated at a news conference.
'Today, it was my day,' Justine said, still wearing her goggles and helmet. 'The last run was my run.'
It was certainly not Hannah Kearney's run.
Kearney, a 27-year-old American, had her quest for a repeat of the gold medal she won at Vancouver in 2010 foiled by a brief but gasp-inducing mistake near the start of the super final. It happened right after the first of two jumps on the course, when she landed ever so slightly off balance and ended up with her skis briefly splayed. She regained her typically immaculate, knees-glued form, but in this unforgiving sport, one momentary loss of control amounts to a fiasco.
'When you're competing, you have so much adrenaline, you don't realize a mistake is that bad,' Kearney said. 'I'm strong and pulled back together with all of my might. It could have been worse.'
In 90 minutes of competition at Rosa Khutor Extreme Park, a crowd cheered, chanted and rang cowbells for one skier after another, with the Russian contingent chanting the loudest. (Rah-see-ya, rah-see-ya is apparently how to shout 'Russia, Russia' in Russian.) Much of the crowd vanished soon after it was clear that a Russian would not win a medal.
Music played for the audience throughout the night - the competition started at 10 p.m. local time - and most of it was club beats layered on top of well-known pop and rock songs. 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' was turned into the sort of number one would hear at a rave.
The slope was 270 perilous looking yards of snow, dimpled with moguls and interrupted twice by two launchpads for the required pair of jumps. The gradient is officially 28 degrees, but it looks much steeper. If this were not a sport, it could pass for the Nordic version of walking the plank.
Moguls is an unusual combination of flat-out race skill and appraised technique. Twenty-five percent of a run is determined by two judges who size up those jumps, 50 percent is determined by judges who weigh in on a competitor's turns, and 25 percent is based on how fast a racer finishes.
The higher off the ground a skier gets on those jumps, and the more daredevilish the maneuvers in midair, the higher a score. But the longer a skier spends in the air, the slower they will go. So it may be best to floor it through most of the course, and catch air twice. Hurry, hurry. Hurry, hurry. Hurry, hurry, finish.
It is not sport for the faint of knee. Skiers must absorb the shock of all those moguls while hiding the work of the absorption - keeping their head even rather than bobbing. That was a larger-than-usual challenge on what was considered to be a particularly savage course here. Heidi Kloser, the No. 2 American and the fourth-ranked moguls skier in the world, crashed on a training run Thursday night, tearing her anterior cruciate ligament and fracturing her femur.
There were no injuries Saturday night, unless one counts the psychic toll that the bronze took on Kearney. She is a far more daring skier than the sisters Dufour-Lapointe, and she flawlessly attacked the course in her second-to-last run, landing in her in first for the super final. Her jump of choice, a 360 while she grabs one of her skis, was among the most dramatic of the night, and she nailed it every time down the mountain.
'I think the girls are consistent skiers,' she said at her news conference, 'but I could hear their scores; they were solid but not unbeatable.'
One serious bobble, though, is all it takes to undo even the best run in an Olympic final, and Kearney said she tried as best she could to put the error out of her mind and focus on the rest of the course as soon as she had recovered. That was not easy.
'I'll have to treat this bronze medal as a reward for fighting,' she said, choking up and letting the tears flow, 'and not perfection.'
The sisters Dufour-Lapointe paid tribute to Kearney, who has said that Sochi will be her last Olympics. But understandably, Justine Dufour-Lapointe was more interested in getting her mind around her victory.
'Winning a gold medal, with Chloe,' she said, 'I'm living the dream right now. I'm not realizing what's going on. Sooner or later, I'll probably realize I'm an Olympic champion.'
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