Tommy Moe had nothing to lose. The unknown American upstart had never won a world-class race. So he risked it all on one reckless run, hurtling down icy slopes, taking jumps too early and too long, once almost skidding out of control. But his daring paid off in the first U.S. Olympic gold medal in downhill skiing in a decade. Four days later, Moe cashed in on the same daredevil tactics again, this time with a silver medal in the super giant slalom. "Maybe I took some unnecessary risks trying to go that much faster," he admitted. But on his 24th birthday, Moe had become the only American man ever to win two ski medals at the same Olympics.
Like Moe, Dan Jansen had little to lose in the 1,000-meter speed- skating event. The American had already lost the 500-meter race, the one in which he held the world record and was strongly favored to win. After slipping to lose the sprint for the fourth time in four straight Olympic appearances, he entered the 1,000 with hardly a prayer. Twice touching the ice with his hand in a heart-stopping show of courage, the star-crossed Olympian at last brought home a gold medal, and in a new world-record time.
Hungry for risk. Going for broke was the American story at the Lillehammer Olympics. With medals decided in milliseconds, the crucial test in these games was having the guts to risk everything on one roll of the dice. Sometimes the gamble paid off in surprise wins over favored Europeans, as it did with Tommy Moe and again with Diann Roffe-Steinrotter, the gold medal winner in the women's super giant slalom. "Don't think, just go," her coach, Paul Major, advised before the race. "The only way you win medals is to take every risk you can," Diann explained.
Other times, naturally, the high-risk strategy bombed, as it did with Duncan Kennedy, who crashed spectacularly at the end of a blistering luge run that should have won him a bronze medal. "It was a medal or nothing," Kennedy said afterward, "and I got nothing."
But on balance, the strategy worked, particularly with the much- maligned U.S. ski team, written off by Sports Illustrated before the games as a "lead-footed snowplow brigade." That barb really stung and may have improved the team's performance, but no one was grateful. After Moe's downhill win, teammate AJ Kitt said, "Sports Illustrated can kiss the U.S. ski team's ass." Only five days into the two-week games, the American skiers had four medals, already matching their total for the entire 1992 games at Albertville. Liz McIntyre's silver in the women's freestyle was the fourth. And prospects are bright for more medals this week, especially when Moe goes after his third in the combined alpine.
The two most famous women in the world today finally met at the Olympics, for the first time since the attack, at a practice rink. Nancy Kerrigan, dressed in bridal white, skated to Elton John's "I'm Still Standing," while Tonya Harding vamped in black tights to Madonna's "Fever." Either will be lucky to win a bronze here. Ukraine's Oksana Baiul, France's Surya Bonaly and China's Lu Chen finished in that order at the 1993 world championships in Prague and are favored to repeat in Lillehammer.
Dark-horse victories aside, Americans won't be at the top of the medals heap overall. Going into the first weekend, they were in a distant fourth as the Russians and Norwegians battled for the lead. Individually, the big winner is already Norway's Johann Olav Koss ("the Boss"), who took the gold in both the 5,000-meter and the 1,500-meter speed-skating events in world-record times and then, with a touch of class, donated his prize money to a charity aiding Sarajevo.
But for the Americans, week one at the Lillehammer Olympics will remain the Tommy Moe show. His success put an unusual happy ending on a modern American trauma. At age 13, Tommy was boozing, smoking pot and running with the wrong crowd. His "experimenting" got him kicked off the U.S. ski team in Montana, and again, three years later, in Alaska. The second time, his dad, Tom Moe Sr., took him out to shovel gravel in miserable weather on a construction site in the Aleutian Island chain -- a site that Tom Sr. describes as "right close to hell." After several weeks, the father asked his son if he preferred skiing or busting his gut at hard labor for a living. Tommy apparently got the message. "I owe a lot to my father," Tommy said after his downhill victory. "I wouldn't have any of this without his guidance and support."
At the start of the week, Tommy Moe was an Olympic nobody. He said he hoped to finish in the top six in the downhill. Instead, a record U.S. television audience witnessed his stunning upset victory; Bill Clinton phoned congratulations from the White House, and by the end of the week, Moe was a household name. "I'm having a dream Olympics," Tommy said. And best of all, it was only half over.
