Best In the World

February 20, 2007

She's got the best name for any athlete anywhere: Hannah Victory. She's 20 years old, races for the Mammoth Mountain Ski Team and is one of 14 skiers named to compete March 7-11 in the 2007 FIS Alpine Junior World Ski Championships in Austria.

That's the good news. The bad news is that the U.S. Ski Team, still tagging itself as "best in the world," turns out to be worst in the world.

All in all, it's been a tough year for American hubris.

Here's how the New York Times put it on Sunday, Feb. 18:

"The door smacked the United States on its way out of the Alpine skiing world championships Sunday, when it finished dead last in the team event. It put together the worst performance by any nation in the short history of team racing.

"The skiers on the United States team made a mess of the icy slope, wrecking and inexplicably flying past gates as if they were lost. They collected, by far, the most points in a race in which the object is to gather as few as possible.

“'It’s a tough way to end the championships,'” said Jesse Hunt, director of the United States team’s Alpine program. His skiers won three medals, all silver, in these 11-race championships.

"Austria easily won the team race with 18 points. Sweden was second with 33 and Switzerland was third (39) among the 11 teams.

"The United States, whose top racers were sidelined because of injury and fatigue, finished with 77 points, which put them well behind Alpine skiing lightweights like the Czech Republic (57) and Slovenia (58).

"The team event, in which skiers compete in the super-G and slalom, was introduced two years ago. Since then, no national team had done as poorly in the race as the United States did Sunday."

E-mail this page to a friend.

Enter your e-mail address and your friend's e-mail address, then click "Send Link". Your friend will receive a link to this page. Your e-mail addresses will not be saved or shared.