U.S. Women’s Team Catches a Rising Star : Skiing: Kristi Terzian didn’t win a World Cup race, but 17 times she finished in the top 15.

PARK CITY, Utah —  Skiing is winding down here in the Wasatch Mountains, but the U.S. ski team is already gearing up for next season, finding hope for renewed glory in the accomplishments of a young racer from, of all places, Fresno.

This resort community near Salt Lake City is the team’s home base, and the locals know the coaches and racers by sight, so when Kristi Terzian orders an apple juice in the Country Store deli, the woman behind the counter lights up. “It’s you,” she says. “You’re a hero now.”

The hero--or heroine, if you prefer--didn’t win any World Cup races this season, but she finished in the top 15 more times than any other American since the circuit was organized in 1967. Her 17 point-scoring races were one more than Tamara McKinney piled up in the 1983-84 season, and they were more astonishing because they were so unexpected.

Diann Roffe, the 1985 world champion in giant slalom, was supposed to be McKinney’s successor as America’s brightest female skiing star, and she well may be after finishing 10th in the women’s overall standings with 130 points.

Terzian wound up 17th with 93 points, but her string of fine results came as a surprise to everyone, among them Alpine Director John McMurtry, who said: “She had just a tremendous season, her best year ever. She was by far the most improved racer on the team.”

From her own vantage point, Terzian said, “It was a good season, but it wasn’t a great season. I can’t be satisfied with how things went this year. I have higher goals, and I hope to reach them in the next couple of years.”

Terzian, who will turn 23 Sunday, plans “definitely” to race for two more years but said: “Actually, the next four years are big years. There’s either a World Championships or an Olympics in (each of those) years, and obviously, at that level I’d like to win medals. But first I’d like to win a World Cup race, and I came close this year.”

The closest was her second place in a giant slalom on March 10 at Stranda, Norway, where she finished just .66 seconds behind Carole Merle of France.

For Terzian, whose mother escaped from Armenia during the Stalin era and has never returned, international ski-racing has literally been a series of ups and downs.

“I have been on the World Cup on and off,” she said. “And I was off because I wasn’t having the results. So (this year), I was able to stay on the World Cup the entire year because I was having the results. And now I know that’s where I belong. I’m comfortable on that circuit, and with the surroundings in Europe, and I know it’s just going to get better.”

She said there is no single reason for her sudden improvement, adding: “I think it was a bunch of little things that I changed. I realized what was important to focus on in my dry-land training, in my on-snow training. And I got rid of all the other little distractions that are not necessary and that (had) stopped me from reaching the top.”

Such as?

“Letting other teammates bother me,” she said. “Letting changing in scheduling bother me, just little problems that I can’t control. And there’s no sense in me worrying about it and stressing out about it when I can’t change things. I can only control my life and my own surroundings.

“Just listening to other people saying what a hectic year it was, I found that, for me, it felt like things went very smoothly. There were a lot of (schedule) changes, but they weren’t drastic changes. The snow was always good where we raced. So, that wasn’t a real factor for me.

“At first, (Europe) is difficult, it’s intimidating. This was the first year I felt like I belonged there.

“Actually, I spent a month there (last) spring on my own time (along with teammates McKinney and Edith Thys), going to school in Kitzbuhel (Austria), trying to learn German, and that was the first time I was in Europe on a purely non-competitive basis. I was there to see Europe, to do a little school. And I think that may have been a factor for me, because I saw things in a different perspective.

“I wasn’t there as a U.S. ski team member--just having someone hold my hand and drag me around to all the different races. It was different, I was on my own schedule. I had my own program, and I had more control, and that’s how I went into Europe this (season). I wanted to control the situation, and I was able to do that.

“I wasn’t intimidated by the other competitors. I wasn’t looking at girls and going, ‘Wow, there’s Maria Walliser,’ or, ‘There’s Vreni (Schneider).’ I felt like I was equal. It’s not the same for everyone, but the first year I was overwhelmed. I was impressed, and now I’m impressed with me, and I know that I can be right there with the rest of those girls.”

Terzian injured her right knee in early 1986 and was off skis for about two months. Then, she pulled ligaments in the same knee on Jan. 5, 1987, when she fell during a race at Saalbach, Austria, and missed the rest of that season.

“Now, it’s at a point where it’s a strong knee,” she said. “You know, the year after, you think about it, and it’s a factor. But these last two years, it’s been good.”

Did her injury make her more determined to succeed?

“It did, definitely,” she said. “I was behind the rest of my group coming out of it, but it did give me more determination.”

There were other motivational factors at work.

“In ‘88, it was between Diann and me going into the last race, for the last spot on the U.S. Olympic team. Then last year before the World Championships, it was between Eva (Twardokens) and me. In fact, they named both Eva and me, and then we had qualification runs a couple of days before the giant slalom (at Vail, Colo.).

“I wound up as the alternate both times. So, I think that was something that really motivated me a lot. I was in so much pain from both of those situations, so disappointed in myself, I just said that I had to change things, and I did.

“Last spring, they put me on the Europa Cup team. I was with a bunch of girls that were very much younger than I, and I was going to some of the worst places in the world. We went to Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia. We went to the Soviet Union. It was an experience I’ll never forget.

“But I learned a really good lesson on that trip, and that was, No. 1, I’m in this sport to have fun, and racing is part of that, but if you’re not enjoying what you’re doing, then you should get out.

“And I had a day of training that was going just terribly. I was crying, and I suddenly just had this thought that either I had to change things or get out. And I think that in my mind somewhere I started listening in a different way and started focusing on what was important.

“That kind of brought me through to my summer training. I wouldn’t necessarily do things because I thought, ‘This is what I have to do,’ I would do things that I would have fun at--play soccer and tennis--along with the hard work and the things that you have to do in the weight room. But having fun is why I’m doing this, and that has to be part of it. I had lost that for a while.

“I trained more specifically. When I did train, I made it quality, 100%. And then even in the on-snow training, I tried to just really focus in on my runs that we were going to take for that day, and I often would make myself go last on the courses (after they became rutted), because I knew that’s where I would be starting. I was never first on the practice courses. I wanted to make it as difficult as possible for myself.

“And another factor was that when we were training as a group, as we always do, I would try to separate myself from the rest of the girls, so that I had complete concentration, 100%, from top to bottom. And I think that just came over into the races.”

So, is there still room for improvement?

“Very much so, because this year I had two runs, maybe three, that I felt were the best runs I could produce,” Terzian said. “And I feel like I can be at a point where I can have those runs all the time, and when that happens, then I’ll be at the top, then I’ll be at my peak.

“In the second run (at Stranda) I made a very big mistake, and I virtually stopped on a gate. I was second going into the second run, and I thought, ‘It’s over. There’s no chance for me to even be in the top 10.’ But I jumped around the gate and kept going, and I think the second half (of that run) I must have skied very well, because I ended up in second.

“I see myself as a good slalom skier, (but) I feel I have the potential to be a lot better in giant slalom than I do in slalom. The way I’m built, I have more of a build for a giant slalom and super-G skier.”

Terzian welcomes the competition with Roffe, 23, who has regained her form of five years ago.

“She’s very strong,” Terzian said of her teammate. “And I feel like for both of us, it’s nice that we have each other’s results and just each other to train against and to compete against, because when you have that kind of level on our own team, it’s something to work for.

“And that’s helped us all. We have a really young team right now, also. Diann and I are the two oldest. There’s Eva, she’s a couple of years older, also. But the other girls are 19 . . . 20, so that’s pretty young.”

With McKinney, 27, sidelined by serious knee and leg injuries last fall, Roffe and Terzian gradually assumed leadership roles on the team.

“I think that we’re going to miss Tamara if she decides to retire,” Terzian said. “If she stays, I think that’s great also, because she’s one of the best in the world.

“But I think maybe, for myself, when we had Tamara here, she was the one who everyone was looking at, she was the one who was always winning the races, always in the top three, and it never put any attention on us. And maybe it was easy for us just to kind of cruise along and not get the results, and no one would really bother, because Tamara was there to have the results.

“And then when she got hurt, I think maybe the added pressure was something that helped me break through the barrier. It’s kind of strange how that happened, like maybe we came out of her shadow a little bit.”

McKinney, the 1983 World Cup overall champion, still hasn’t decided whether she will come back for a 14th season with the team.

Terzian said: “I don’t know (what McKinney will do). . . . She came to our nationals (at Crested Butte, Colo., in late February), and we were all real happy to see her, and I was just with her a few days ago in Vail at the Jimmie Heuga Express Finals. She wants to stay involved. I don’t know what her plans are. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. In fact, she just started skiing. She was just cruising around. But she was on skis.”

As for being a new leader of the team, Terzian said: “Skiing is a very individual sport. It’s difficult because we travel as a team and train as a team, but when you’re in the race, you’re racing against your teammates and everyone else in the world. Actually, I had my first encounter with (being a leader) at the nationals between runs of the giant slalom. One of the younger girls, Megan Garety--I believe she’s like 18, very young--she was in third after the first run, and we were inspecting (the course), and she came up to me and said, ‘What are you going to do in that under gate? Are you going to come off it a little bit?’

“And that was when it hit me. I thought, ‘This girl is only three-tenths (of a second) behind me, and she’s asking me for advice!’ But I realized that now I’m in that role, and I’m willing to help.”

Terzian told Garety how she planned to take the gate, then went back up and won the race. Would she have had second thoughts if the younger racer had won?

“I don’t think so,” she said. “I knew in my mind exactly what I needed to do, and if I could help her out, great, and that wasn’t going to affect my result.”

Terzian remembered receiving help herself as a young skier--from two older sisters.

“I was born in Fresno and we later lived in Sanger until I was 14,” she said. “Then I moved to Lake Tahoe, to Incline Village (Nev.), and went to school there. The first year, we all moved up there, except my father. He would commute back and forth from our home in Sanger. My dad is an almond- and grape-grower, and my mom is a schoolteacher. So my dad stayed and was working on the ranch, and he would come up on the weekends.

“Before I moved up to Tahoe, I skied at a little place called China Peak (now Sierra Summit), which was an hour and a half from our home. And it was a great area to grow up at. I started when I was 3 and just cruised all around that mountain. I have two older sisters, and as each of us came along, we started younger and younger. Karen--she was the oldest--started when she was 7. And my middle sister (started) when she was 5. Then I came along and I started when I was 3.

“My dad and mom both skied. But in fact, it was my uncle who got us all going. He bought my oldest sister her first pair of skis. So that’s kind of what started it all, and then the whole family got involved. And next thing we knew, my dad was running us back and forth up to Tahoe because that’s where most of the racing was done--every weekend. And then it just got too much, all the races. We all began to get better and better. My middle sister (Katrina) was on the junior national team. So that’s why we moved up to Tahoe, and we were there for about three years. I went to a ski academy, called Ski Etude.

“Then I went to Salt Lake City. I finished my high school there at Rowmark Ski Academy--my sister (Katrina) came also--and I’ve resided here ever since. I’m attending the University of Utah right now. I’m in my sophomore year and only go a quarter a year, usually in the spring.

“It was difficult growing up in the area I grew up in, because there’s no snow. Most of my other teammates had a much better situation than I did. I came from Central California. People always laugh. They say, ‘You’re a skier, and you’re from Fresno?’ My parents had to sacrifice a lot to put me through school, and private schools are very expensive. The farming business hasn’t been so great. My dad’s kind of pulling himself out of debt, slowly.

“But if you have the determination and the talent to make it, you’re going to make it one way or the other.”

Terzian credited her sisters with pushing her along in racing.

“We were competitive,” she said. “And I was able to learn from the mistakes they went through.”

Why did she go on racing after her sisters quit?

“I don’t know,” she said. “I guess it’s because I was a little more successful than they were. And then I had a few bad years. There were many times these past few years when I thought, ‘I should give this up and go to school and get on with the rest of my life.’ And then the other part of me would say, ‘You only get this opportunity once, and if you don’t try your best to make it, you’re going to regret it some day, when you’re sitting behind a desk, wondering why you didn’t give it another shot.’ So, I have no regrets. I’m glad I stuck it out.”

Terzian said her mother, Virginia, is especially proud of having a daughter on the U.S. ski team.

“She left (the Soviet Union after World War II) when she was only 5, with her mother,” Terzian said. “Her father had been taken away to Siberia. She’d never met her father. She has two older sisters that they left behind and had to bring out later.

“I’m actually three-quarters Armenian. Her mother was Armenian, and her father was Russian. My father is 100% Armenian, but he was born in New York.

“When I raced in the Soviet Union, it was at an area very close to Armenia, and immediately, because of my name, they knew I was Armenian, so I had a lot of people coming up to me, asking me about my heritage and my family. My mother was excited for me to go and see a little bit of the Soviet Union.

“I went to Vail for the Jimmie Heuga Express, and the reason I did that, actually, is because my mother has (multiple sclerosis), and that event (benefits) the MS center.”

In some ways, Terzian finds ski racing a trade-off.

“I feel like, for a girl my age, I’m lacking a lot of things because I ‘m not going to school,” she said. “But with the traveling, I’m much more knowledgeable in different areas, and I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything, because when I come home, I have such a good group of friends who kind of take me into their college life when I’m here. It’s nice--I have the best of both worlds.

“It’s nice just walking around town here, or anywhere lately. . . . I’ve been on campus, or in Vail. . . . People, Americans even, recognize my name and they recognize my results this year. And it’s so nice to have people come up to you and say, you know, ‘I saw that run on TV and that was great. We’re very proud of you.’ I think that just gets me more motivated to do even better.”

McMurtry, who succeeded Harald Schoenhaar as U.S. Alpine director after the 1988 Winter Olympics, said Terzian was one of the principal reasons for his team’s improvement this season.

“I think she was ranked 64th in the world in slalom to start the year off,” McMurtry said. “She’s now ranked in the first seed in two events (super-G and GS), and she’s 17th or 18th in slalom. She’s really positioning herself for some exciting years.

“The injuries have been a big reason why she hasn’t had this kind of year (before). She’s athletically more mature now and she’s got some experience, so I think everything just kind of came together for her. She’s got a really good attitude and a good perspective about the sport and what she can accomplish.”

McMurtry, 39, coached the U.S. women technical skiers from 1976 to ’84. He said that this has been a season of “definite progress.”

“Any way you look at it, it was an up year,” he said. “A year ago, we scored 232 (World Cup) points, and Tamara (McKinney) scored half of those (116). This year, without Tamara, we scored 367 points.

“We were 11th (in the Nations’ Cup) last year; we were eighth this year. The number of athletes scoring World Cup points last year was 10; this year it was 16--that’s nine women and seven men.

“The number of top-15 performances a year ago was 30, and Tamara had 11 of those; this year, the team had 57 (of which Terzian had 17).

“A.J. Kitt looks like he’s going to be first seed (among the first 15 starters) in downhill. He had a fourth and a sixth this year, and he should be 14th on the FIS list. He started the year ranked in the 70s in the world.

“Diann Roffe is first seed now in three events. She’s the first three-event first-seeder that we’ve had since Cindy Nelson (in the 1970s and early ‘80s).

“Then this young guy (Nate Bryan, 19) had a really outstanding year. He won the Europa Cup finals giant slalom, the first (American) since Greg Jones in 1975 to do so. He’s a really exciting young kid. He started 29th, was 13th after the first run and won the second run by a second. He beat Patrick Staub, who’s the Swiss national giant slalom champion this year.

“So, it was a year of improvement, but we’re not satisfied. We’re eighth. We feel we shouldn’t be eighth. Our goal is to be No. 1, but I think you have to look at it and say we’re going in the right direction.”

McMurtry attributed Kitt’s downhill charge to better conditioning, saying: “I think that whole downhill group has worked very hard on conditioning. We’ve put a major emphasis on that for the entire team, but particularly these guys. Downhill is a strength and power event. So, Kitt has really improved his conditioning and strength, and I think that had a lot to do with it.

“I think attitude was another thing. These guys believe that they can do something, and that’s half the battle--the belief that they can be there.

“Kitt is 22 now. A year ago, the average age of the men’s downhill winners on the World Cup circuit was 29, with about nine years of experience. And this is (only) his second full season on the World Cup tour. So, he’s got room for a lot of improvement, but he’s a real talent.”

McMurtry is also looking for a return to form by Kyle Wieche, 22, and Felix McGrath, 27.

“A year ago in giant slalom, Wieche had two or three top-10 results,” McMurtry said. “This year, he broke his hand in December and had to have surgery, had to have a pin put in it. It was kind of a freaky injury, and he just never quite got everything put back together in his skiing. But he’s going to be there. He’s a talented athlete.

“McGrath has had a shoulder injury and just had surgery. If he can stay injury-free, Felix has the talent to win. It’s up to him.”

As for McKinney, McMurtry said: “She hasn’t decided (whether to retire). It was a very bad injury, and I think she wants to wait and see how it’s coming along and how far she can go. It was a knee and also a (leg) fracture, and it was a very complicated, difficult injury. I don’t know. She hasn’t announced anything.”

McMurtry, who said, “I’m committed through Albertville (the 1992 Winter Olympics in France), and then we’ll see after that where we’re going,” cited two principal changes that he has made in the team’s program.

“We went back to really emphasizing conditioning, No. 1,” he said. “We felt that it was something we really needed to emphasize.

“The other thing we’ve emphasized is our development program. The last three years, we’ve put $1.5 million into athlete development, that’s athletes below the national team level. After ‘84, there was a drastic cutback in funding for development. . . . We’ve streamlined our structure. We have a top-to-bottom program now, which we’ve never had before, meaning a program that goes all the way from the top World Cup level to the grass-roots programs in the country.

“The budget for the coming year is $2.8 million for the entire Alpine program. We’re in a position now that we can budget a program in April for the whole year and not have any fear that we’re going to have a cut. Financially, we’re very stable, and we’ve signed on some new corporate sponsors that are really excited about the program. The money goes for training the athletes, room and board, travel, coaching salaries, our sports medicine program, etc.”

The team also gets equipment from a pool of suppliers, which McMurtry estimated is worth an additional $2.5 million.

“We had some great athletes up through ’84 but we didn’t develop anything behind that, and that’s where we ran into problems,” he said.

“You hear a lot that there are other sports our young athletes can get into, but we’ve got 6 or 7 million really hard-core skiers in this country--that’s the population of Switzerland--and out of that we should be able to find some talent that can win. And I’m convinced we can.

“One of the things we’re always looking at and trying to figure out is how to get younger kids into the sport, kids who may not be able to (compete) because of the cost factor. And with our development program, I think we’re starting to keep younger athletes who might have turned to other sports at some point.”

Acknowledging that there is more money to be made in several other sports, McMurtry said: “We’re working on some ideas to change that, too. This prize-money issue that we’re going to be fighting hard for at the FIS (International Ski Federation) Congress in May--that there be prize money in racing--I think this is going to be very important for the development of the sport.

“It would create more excitement, and we want to start it as soon as possible. It would make skiing a big-time event in this country.”

Now, racers receive money from their various supplier contracts for victories and high placings, through programs administered by their national teams or federations, but prize money put up by race organizers or television sponsors is not permissible under FIS or Olympic rules.

To “bring another dimension to the program,” McMurtry said he has hired Bryan Williams, captain of the University of Houston’s 1983 NCAA Final Four basketball team, as conditioning coach for the women’s team.

Williams is the first black to be associated with the team at the national level, but he may not be the last.

Asked if there might be any black skiers who could be developed into racers, McMurtry said: “Absolutely. It’s (a matter of) economics right now. But we’re going to explore ways that we can do that.

“Bryan wasn’t hired for that reason. He was hired because he was the best guy available for the position. But Bryan has got some ideas, too, that he wants to explore. There’s a lot of great young talent out there that we don’t tap yet.”

McMurtry, who was the racing coach at China Peak in 1974 through ‘76, said he recently came across a photo of one of his teams there, and “Kristi Terzian is in there. She’s about this big.” He put his hand close to the ground. “She had two sisters who were older who were tremendous there. She was awfully young then, about 9 or 10.”

And as Terzian has just shown, a year or two can make a big difference.