(7 of 10)
Skiing in sixth position, Moser-Pröll charged the course hard, risking everything in the tight, steep, slippery turns on the top of the run. She crouched into an aerodynamic tuck where no one else dared. It was a display of intimidating control, and it gave Moser-Pröll a gold medal as well as a slight case of frostbite.
Behind Annemarie to take the silver came Liechtenstein's Hanni Wenzel, 23, the stocky older sister of Andreas, 21. In the women's giant slalom, Hanni and Annemarie reversed their positions, and then some. Hanni worked down the course in smooth and easy runs to take the gold, with West Germany's Irene Epple winning the silver and France's Perrine Pelen the bronze. Annemarie, who does not care much for the giant slalom, finished sixth.
Two days later, Moser-Pröll took a spill on the steep upper portion of the shorter women's slalom in the first run and was eliminated. Hanni stayed upright and swept to her second gold by a commanding margin of nearly 1.5 sec. With two golds and a silver in the three alpine events, she matched the smashing performance of West Germany's Rosi Mittermaier in the 1976 Winter Games at Innsbruck.
No moment was sweeter for the Americans than the last instant in the 4-3 hockey victory over the Soviets. The berserk din in the Olympic arena must have been dimly audible at the Canadian border 50 miles away. Anyone on the International Olympic Committee who thought that politics has nothing to do with the Games should have sampled the crowd's ear-splitting roar: "U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!" The feisty young American players began by raising their sticks toward the rafters in an eruption of glad amazement, and ended by arcing them into the cheering crowd for souvenirs.
If it was a bit foolish, even sad, to savor the victory as an act of geopolitical symbolism, Americans nonetheless had a right to be proud of their boys. A pond-hockey pickup crew of collegians, they had knocked off an athletic machine assembled from the best that the Soviet army and the Moscow Dynamo could produce—the best team in the world, professional or amateur. Basically the same Soviet outfit trounced the National Hockey League All-Stars at Madison Square Garden last year. The Soviets have won the title in every Olympics since 1964; the Americans last took the gold 20 years ago in Squaw Valley.
This year's U.S. team, assembled by Coach Herb Brooks from cold-weather colleges in places like Massachusetts and Minnesota, were occasionally ragged, but as tough and willing as a neighborhood mutt. Just a few days before Lake Placid, they had lost to the Soviets, 10-3, in an exhibition game in Madison Square Garden. But at the end of the first period last Friday, the Americans left the ice with a 2-2 tie, thanks to a last-second goal scored by Mark Johnson from the University of Wisconsin. When the Soviets returned from intermission, they came out playing as if they had had intimations of Siberia. Their slam-bang forechecking kept the Americans from penetrating much beyond center ice. The game got brawlingly physical. Trailing 3-2 as the final period started, the Americans started skating better and controlling the puck with more authority. Thrown offstride, the Soviets were unable to set up then-intricate plays or pass cross-ice.