Fine finish for 'flat' Fletcher

BARDONECCHIA, Italy -- Just before she left the starting gate, with a 1.50-second lead and a bronze medal on the line, Rosey Fletcher balled her fist and tapped it, once, on the left side of her chest. Under her ski suit, right by her heart, was a drawn picture, a miniature version of herself -- Flat Rosey, named after the children's book Flat Stanley, in which a young boy gets flattened by a bulletin board and travels the world, complete with blond hair, ski cap, and medal dangling around her neck.

Less than two minutes later, real Rosey would have one to match.

With two disappointing Olympics behind her -- she didn't finish in the giant slalom in Nagano and came up 26th as a favorite in the parallel giant slalom in Salt Lake -- Fletcher turned to the paper doll, given to her by a third-grader at Girdwood Elementary in her beloved hometown of Girdwood, Alaska, for a little bit of luck. Clearly, it worked. Once she finished the race, just at the bottom of the course, she held up the picture, and waved it at a camera. She would be returning to Girdwood with the bronze, and Flat Rosey would be returning to her artist.

''From Day One, I knew this was going to be one hell of an Olympics," said Fletcher, who plans to retire at the end of the World Cup season. ''I have had fun this whole time. My roommate Michelle [Gorgone] and I have done and seen and experienced as much as we possibly could. From the beginning I really wanted to just really enjoy the journey, something that I never really allowed myself to do at Nagano or Salt Lake. It was all about the destination. For me, today was just about having fun."

After having the second-fastest run in the qualification round, Fletcher seemed poised for a good afternoon, though the brackets did little to help her. Two top Swiss snowboarders, Daniela Meuli and Ursula Bruhin, were on her side; Bruhin would be her opponent in the quarterfinals, Meuli in the semis. (Parallel giant slalom races are determined by head-to-head matchups in which each racer takes two runs, one down each of two courses.) Bruhin went down by the length of a snowboard, though, before Meuli -- the eventual gold medalist, beating German Amelie Kober, who skidded out in the final -- took her out. Fletcher had come out .24 seconds ahead of Meuli after the first run, but had yet to race on the red course, which became the downfall of quite a few competitors, and blew out near the middle.

That left her in the small final, the run for the bronze.

''I would have never counted Rosey out," said Peter Foley, one of the US team snowboard coaches. ''It's such a mental game, and then to be in the race for third and fourth, it's the toughest race in the Olympics. It's a race between night and day."

But, when Austrian Doris Guenther blew out quickly in the first run, Fletcher got that 1.50 penalty lead to start the final run. It's a big time gap, sure, but Fletcher was racing on the dangerous and slow red course, so nothing was assured. That's when Fletcher gave some love to Flat Rosey. Racing carefully, she wound her way down through the slalom gates and, though Guenther made up some time, had enough to fly across the finish with a .69-second advantage and the loot.

''What a long, strange trip it's been," said Fletcher, 30, the first American to make three Olympic snowboard teams. ''This bronze medal just tops off a number of events during my career that have made a big impact on me."

It wasn't all good for the Americans in Bardonecchia, though. Gorgone, from Sudbury, Mass., got turned around on a gate near the top of her first qualifying run and failed to make it to the afternoon portion of the racing, finishing 22d.

''Usually [my coach, Jan Wengelin] can get kind of mad at me for pulling a stunt like that," Gorgone said. ''He was actually in pretty good spirits about it. He was laughing at me, like what the hell was that. He calls me 'Scud' sometimes because I'm like an unguided missile. We decided I was going to have to go on a scud mission and go nuts, just go [all out] and see what would happen. It didn't work out, but I would do it again in a second if that's what I had to do to make it."