It was downhill from the start

SESTRIERE, Italy -- Saturday night under the lights, the United States Ski Team suffered its final humiliation of these Olympic Games.

Not only were its biggest names in slalom non-starters in the second run, but the podium was stuffed with Austrians.

And the indisputable best skier in the world stood on the gold step of the podium -- 27-year-old Benjamin Raich -- leader of the winningest ski team in the world.

Earlier Saturday, US Ski Team CEO Bill Marolt had met with a group of journalists to review his team's performance, hours before the final debacle at the men's slalom.

Explaining that the team's stated goal was to outperform every other nation in Alpine skiing and snowboarding, Marolt said he believed he has seen steady improvement over the years.

''I feel we had a solid plan this season and that if we executed that plan we would hit our targets," said Marolt. ''We haven't done that . . . Everyone wants an explanation. There really isn't one."

With this frank assessment, Marolt tabled all other vital questions, including queries about what appeared to be a lack of preparation and the party-boy behavior of Bode Miller. Marolt did, however, promise a further review of the entire team's performance here.

The US men and women combined for two Alpine medals (Ted Ligety's gold in the combined and Julia Mancuso's gold in the giant slalom), so some simple math tells observers the team fell well short of its stated goal of eight medals. ''A shock," is how US coach Phil McNichol described it. ''Everyone's expectations were really high."

Were they too high?

Certainly the tag line ''Best in the World," a bumper sticker slogan dreamed up by Marolt's troops aimed at fund-raising and marketing, was a reach.

The slogan helped put an entire team of athletes in the line of fire. For starters, by any measure, for now and for the last decade, the Austrian team has been the best in the world as ski racing has developed into a sports industry comparable, per capita, to the NFL. Austria has three times the Nations Cup points than the US.

Several Austrian racers who failed to make the national team, including Andreas Schifferer, would be competitive ski racers in any international venue, according to long-time French ski historian Patrick Lang, whose father, Serge, founded the World Cup tour.

Just to put a finer point on the matter, when Hermann Maier won the silver medal in super-G, he bellowed from the podium, ''Best in the world" referring to himself, of course. And after coming up empty in eight of 10 races at these Games, the phrase was just short of becoming a national joke.

Obviously it is unfair to make one athlete the symbol for all that went wrong for the Americans, just as it's unfair not to acknowledge the great performances from Ligety, Mancuso, Jimmy Cochran, Chip Knight, or the courageous efforts from Lindsey Kildow and Kristina Koznick.

But if ever a racer came to put a face on the US Ski Team, taking the team to a national level in terms of hype and publicity, it was Miller. Coming into the Turin Games, his picture graced Time, Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, and Ski Racing the same week.

Several other national magazines -- Outside and Men's Journal, for instance -- all had their Bode issue.

Never had a racer, not Phil Mahre nor Bill Johnson, not Tamara McKinney nor even Picabo Street, brought ski racing to national attention leading into an Olympic Games. So, for good or ill -- the latter it turns out -- Bode became the focal point for ''Best in the World" despite the many warning signs that the slogan was not such a great idea.

One needn't do much research to learn Miller was not having a great year, nor even a particularly good one following his overall World Cup title. But certainly the Alpine team does deserve credit as the second ''Best in the World" and the best and deepest team the US has ever fielded.

In three months of World Cup, seven Americans accounted for 37 podiums, an unprecedented show of strength of depth. So certainly it was not unwarranted to imagine, if not eight Alpine medals, at least more than two.

It's the same number the US won at Salt Lake City, though those were silver -- Miller in the combined and giant slalom.

And for these Games, the team that was supposed to contend with the Austrians, among other Europeans, finished just about where it really belongs, in second place. Second, that is, if one applies the World Cup scoring system of assigning points from first to 30th place, not just the top three.

''I've been in this a long time," said Marolt, standing at the women's slalom venue Friday night. ''The press is going to be critical when you're not performing at a level everyone anticipates. And when you do a good job they'll give you the accolades. I understand that. Once this thing is over, I'll sit down and figure out everything that happened here, the good and the bad. What we did, why we did it and how we did it.

''I love football, so I like to see ski racing in the football vernacular. And coming to the Olympics is a lot like going to the Super Bowl. Sometimes when you make the Super Bowl things just don't work out the way you think they're going to. You have everything in place, you're prepared, you have a great game plan, and you know you come out and it just doesn't flow the way you think it's going to flow.

''And nobody, absolutely nobody, can explain -- not [Bill] Belichick or [Vince] Lombardi or [Bill] Cowher, whoever -- why teams don't perform the way you thought they would."