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Janica
Kostelic aiming for perfection
by Patrick Lang
Park
City, Utah, Nov. 24th . She
doesn’t feel herself at
her best yet, but Croatia’s
Janica Kostelic apparently don’t
need it to continue her domination
of the women’s ski tour.
In Park City, the triple Olympic
Champion began the 2003 season
as successfully as she ended
the last one at Flachau - with
an impressive victory over the
rest of the world class field.
Janica Kostelic feels almost
at home in Park City where she
competes since November 1998.
That year the Croatian trained
since her younger age by her
father Ante, a former international
handball player, finished an
amazing 3rd in the slalom, her
first in fact at this level
of international ski racing.
She was only 16 at that year
yet her talent was already established
among the experts who knew about
her records in the junior races.
Four years later Janica established
herself as a true phoneme on
the women’s tour, accumulating
a series of incredible victories
including three Olympic Golds
despite several serious accidents
and injuries.
3rd four years ago despite a
very high start-number, the
now 20-year-old celebrated a
very emotional and quite unexpected
triumph two years later when
she beat Germany’s Martina
Ertl eleven months after a disastrous
crash while training downhill
at St Moritz. She torn almost
all the ligaments of her right
knee in that spectacular accident
and many feared that she could
never skied again.
A strong comeback at Park City
But working harder than ever,
Janica slowly recovered her
form and achieved a unique comeback
here in her first slalom after
her crash. It was also the beginning
of an stupendous winter during
which she won eight consecutive
slaloms and the Overall World
Cup title at the end of the
season.
But another injury at a knee
forced her to undergo three
more surgeries in the weeks
following her triumph at Are,
in Sweden.
She missed the season-start
afterwards and had to wait the
beginning of December 2001 to
return to action in Val d’Isère
– where she fell again
in giant slalom. The odds didn’t
look good for her – yet
she beat them again in February
as she won an unprecedented
four Olympic medals in the four
events she entered – including
an unexpected silver in Super-G,
a discipline she seldom trains
before the winter.
Close to two hundred thousand
person welcomed their new hero
at Zagreb when she returned
from Salt Lake City – the
main square of Croatia’s
Capital was full of admirers
when the town honored her!
More health problems
Yet
her health problems were far
from over – last July,
she was diagnosed with appendicitis
while training in Zermatt and
she had to be urgently operated
when the pain became too strong.
She missed a month of physical
training afterwards – the
worst scenario in fact for this
personated athlete who gets
easily bored when not in movement!
Last fall, she was again ill
while training in Austria’s
Hinterdux where she suffered
from a violent virus in her
stomach and she lost again much
time and energy before returning
on snow.
Yet even if she believed to
be actually only at 50% of her
capacity, she came in 3rd on
Thursday in giant slalom despite
strong pains at her back and
she was again out of reach in
that first slalom of the new
season.
An aggressive first run put
her almost half a second in
the lead – enough to remain
out of reach of her toughest
rivals as France’s slalom
darling Christel Pascal, the
silver medal winner at the 2001
Worlds, and Austria’s Sabine
Egger, the 1999 slalom World
Cup champion. The former lost
70/100 on her, the later over
a second – 1,14 seconds
exactly even if Kostelic didn’t
want to take again a maximum
of risks in the second leg.
10 to 15 victories?
Where
is she going this winter if
she recovers parts of her form
and her health in the coming
weeks? Ten to fifteen victories
in the technical events, combined
and even Super-G are possible
and with them a second Overall
World Cup title – officially
not on her agenda for the moment.
“I don’t want to set
myself any precise goal beside
doing my best and enjoying what
I’m doing” she told
the media at the Press Conference
where she admitted that she
had a strong advantage on her
rivals because she is traveling
with her entire family. Her
older brother Ivica, the 2002
slalom World Cup winner, also
competes in Park City and her
mother Marica – which she
called “The Boss”
– takes care of the logistics
and the cooking while father
Ante manages her training program.
“It’s perfect like
this, we feel at home where
ever we are” she explained.
“We spent sometimes six
weeks in Hinterdux in the apartment
we rent for the entire summer
and that’s fine because
I like nothing more than skiing,
skiing all the time”. This
place is also more spacious
than the old flat in which the
family still lives in the center
of Zagreb – so small that
Janica sleeps on the floor on
a simple mattresses. They are
so busy with their ski activity
that they just have no time
to move in the new one which
they recently bought nearby.
Stronger and more relaxed
Ivica believes that she is mentally
stronger than any other racer
– and much more relaxed
too when racing against the
clock. “She doesn’t
need so much training anymore,
her technique is much superior
and her nerves incredibly strong
– she doesn’t feel
any pressure” he says.
Janica on her side thinks that
the miles she accumulated for
years while training mostly
explain her success. She said
that she practices sometime
over 20 slalom runs a day without
getting bored. “ I began
very young with this and I have
a great rhythm for skiing in
me” she said.
“I don’t approach
my limits when I’m racing
and I believe to be still far
away from the perfection I aim
to reach one day. I dream to
ski as well as Ingemar Stenmark,
by far the best skier in the
history of the sport. He has
won 86 World Cup races in his
career – including 15 giant
slaloms in a row! I watched
videos of him and I’m really
impressed. I wish to be again
totally healthy to try to approach
his perfection as I did here
last February. I believe that
I produced my best ever skiing
in my two GS runs
here”.
Janica doesn’t give much
credit to women ski racing saying
that the technical level is
actually rather poor compared
to men’s skiing –
which may well force her soon
to compete mostly again herself
to find a new momentum in the
coming years. “Most women
are afraid to attack, they ski
like chicken” she said
once. “I would be mad to
lose a second in a single on
another skier after having given
my best” she added.
Her rivals will try hard to
catch her next week at Aspen,
Colorado, where a Super-G and
a slalom are scheduled –
if they fail again, they may
have a hard time to challenge
her in the coming months!
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