One after another, the young and the reckless of Alpine skiing paid the price of their daring Friday at the same treacherous turn on the slippery men's downhill course - none more spectacularly than the great Hermann Maier.
The 25-year-old Austrian was sent sailing off the course, crashing through two safety fences and tumbling head over heels down a cliff.A moment earlier, Jean-Luc Cretier had used the wisdom of nine years of World Cup racing in a mix of caution and speed for a near-flawless run to become the first Frenchman to win the Olympic downhill since Jean-Claude Killy in 1968.
"After today's victory, I could stop skiing tomorrow," said the 31-year-old Cretier, who has often been in contention but never a winner in World Cup racing. "It's not bad for an aging skier like me. It's a proper reward for a tough career."
The Frenchman, who later said he was only joking and would be back for another season, was the third skier down the course on a warm, sunny day that turned the surface to icy mush for a race that had been postponed three times by weather. His winning time was 1:50.11, four-tenths of a second ahead of silver medalist Lasse Kjus of Norway.
A few hours later - in a rare Alpine doubleheader caused by the week's many weather postponements - Kjus also won the silver medal in the men's combined, an event in which he had won the gold four years ago.
The powerful Austrians had expected gold in the downhill, but it came instead in the less prestigious combined event, where Mario Reiter was the surprise winner. Reiter, a slalom specialist, had been left off his country's Olympic slalom team after a poor, injury-plagued World Cup season.
His time of 3:08.06 for two slalom runs Tuesday and Friday's combined downhill was 0.59 faster than Kjus.
Austrians also won two bronze skiing medals, one by Hannes Trinkl in the downhill and one by Christian Mayer in the combined.
Cretier's victory satisfied American Tommy Moe, the defending gold medalist who finished 12th.
"I'd rather have a Frenchman win it than an Austrian any day," he said.
Maier, whose 10 victories in this his first full World Cup season made him a favorite in the downhill, super-G and giant slalom events, selected the No. 4 starting spot, a number considered extremely unlucky in Japan, where the word for four also means death.
Starting one spot after Cretier, Maier came barreling out of the gate in his usual take-no-prisoners style. But when he came to the sharp left turn just before the first big jump, his line was far too close to the gate.
As he threw his body toward the course, his skis flew in the opposite direction. He sailed into the air, skis flailing, then landed on his head, tumbled through the two safety nets and over the cliff. Maier climbed to his feet and crawled up the cliff.
"I was very fast and there was a lot of wind from the back side and I went up into the air and was looking at the sky," Maier said later. "I looked down at the snow and waited for the crash and tried to be comfortable."
Team officials said Maier suffered hip and shoulder injuries and "a bad headache." He sat out the downhill portion of the combined event later Friday, but will compete in the super-G, scheduled for Saturday.
Italian Luca Cattaneo, who crashed at the same spot, tore his left Achilles' tendon and was airlifted to a Nagano hospital by helicopter.
In all, 12 of the 40 skiers failed to finish, most of them missing a gate after botching that crucial early turn. A strong tailwind made negotiating that turn especially difficult, said Kyle Rasmussen, the top American in ninth place.
"You had to be tactically smart up there," Rasmussen said. "There were a lot of guys who were really pushing the envelope and they weren't skiing tactically smart. You had to come in there and absorb the terrain and scrub a little speed (slow down) before you went over that roll so you could stay on the ground.
"The guys that got light and went wide had a hell of a time."
Cretier said the gate where all the trouble occurred had been moved twice before the race, by a meter prior to inspection and by another meter after inspection.
He had watched as crews decided to chop away some snow from the first jump to ease the impact of the wind, so he wasn't sure what to expect when he reached that part of the course.
"Today I had to ski on instinct," he said, "and I must say that the French have pretty good instinct."
He stood up on the turn, while Maier and others remained in a tuck to maximize their speed.
"My experience helped me improvise," Cretier said. "I was very careful."
When the outcome was certain, Cretier grabbed a cell phone in the finish area and spoke to his 8-year-old son, who had stayed up all night back in France to watch the race.
"He was jumping for joy on his bed," Cretier said.
Trinkl, who at 30 is one of the older Austrian skiers, said he also had noticed during inspection that the early turn was extremely tricky.
"This was a race where we older skiers had the benefit of experience," he said. "As Jean-Luc said, you had to ski with your head."
Rasmussen, 29, who came back from a serious knee injury just to compete in a final Olympics, pronounced himself satisfied with his finish, .98 seconds behind the winner, especially since a sore back kept him out of two of last week's three training runs.
"I was not that far out of medal contention," he said. "I skied up to my abilities."
Moe was 1.32 seconds behind the winner. Another American, Jason Rosener, was 15th, 2.22 seconds slower than Cretier. The fourth U.S. skier, A.J. Kitt, was among those who failed to make that tricky turn.
In other action:
NORDIC COMBINED: The home fans keep flocking to the ski jump. And they keep getting disappointed. Just when it seemed the Nagano twins would take the lead in the ski jumping portion of the Nordic combined, Norway's Bjarte Engen Vik uncorked a huge jump. Some 35,000 people gathered to watch Kenji Ogiwara, the world champion, and his twin brother, Tsugiharu, who are big stars in Japan.
Vik's 94.5 meters puts him in front going into the cross-country portion of the event Saturday. Tsugiharu Ogiwara was third, and his brother ninth.
FIGURE SKATING: Todd Eldredge had one more day to ponder the question of his Olympics. Simply put, it's to quad or not to quad. The five-time U.S. champion can win the Olympic gold by winning Saturday's free skate. But so can Russia's Ilya Kulik and Canadian Elvis Stojko. Both Kulik and Stojko are expected to try quadruple jumps, but Eldredge hadn't decided whether he will yet. Eldredge has tried it only once in competition, barely missing it at nationals. He tried it once in practice, Friday, but missed it.
SPEEDSKATING: Catriona Le May-Doan has been dominant in the women's 500 meters this year. Even while losing her balance, she's good enough to be in the lead after the first of two races. The Canadian speedskater stumbled at the start but still managed to set an Olympic record of 38.39 seconds Friday. Teammate Susan Auch, who won the silver in Lillehammer was second at 38.42, while Japan's Tomomi Okazaki was third at 38.55. The best American time was 39.09 for Chris Witty of West Allis, Wis., who was in ninth. The 500 is being decided for the first time over two days, the winner determined by the combined time. The second run is Saturday.