Lindsey Kildow was skiing over her head.
She was 11, used to picking her way through slalom gates on a Minnesota molehill, and there she was in Vail, Colo., skiing a downhill race in the Rocky Mountains in the Junior 3 category. That is the racing level for kids at least 2 years older, and the course was set with that in mind.
It was no surprise that Kildow’s first run in that Junior Olympic downhill was knee-knockingly meek. She stood straight up the whole way down, never daring the tuck position necessary to go fast.
“I was a little scared,” she said, meaning she was more nervous than really frightened.
After all, nervous is the way Kildow, now 20, described how she felt skiing at 85 m.p.h. last month in Santa Caterina, Italy, where the women’s races at the Alpine World Ski Championships will begin Sunday.
Kildow’s father, Alan, told Lindsey before her second run that day in Vail she was going to have to put her knees to her chest, get into a tuck and stay in it. When she did just that and celebrated with more excitement than relief, her father knew Kildow had the requisite elements of courage and insanity to be a downhill racer.
“I had no idea what I was doing, but going fast never really bothered me,” Kildow said.
No wonder her mother, Linda Krohn, likes to know Lindsey has finished a race before watching it on television.
“It’s like car racing,” Alan Kildow said. “Some have the ability to hold their foot on the gas pedal longer than the others. She has that ability.”
This young woman who calls herself “very much a Midwestern girl” is going fast enough to bother the Austrian women who have dominated the sport’s speed events since the heyday of U.S. skiers Picabo Street and Hilary Lindh from 1994-98. Kildow is a contender for world titles in the combined (downhill and slalom) and both speed events, downhill and super-giant slalom, the last a downhill slowed by having to navigate widely spaced gates.
It is a good thing her father knew enough about skiing not to be discouraged when Lindsey’s first coach, Eric Sailer, provided a negative appraisal of her ability after she began racing when she was 7 at his ski school at Buck Hill in Burnsville, Minn. Sailer, third at the legendary Hahnkenkamm race in 1950, also had coached Alan Kildow.
“I felt sorry for her father,” Sailer said. “She was a real turtle. She just didn’t move fast.”
Even if she had been party to that assessment, it likely wouldn’t have bothered Lindsey either. She already was dedicated to becoming as good as the World Cup racers on the videos her father showed her. That meant going to Buck Hill almost every night and staying on the slopes until the staff started packing up.
“I realized at a young age I was driven,” she said. “I always wanted to work on things to make my skiing better. I wouldn’t stop until I had figured something out or fixed something.
“It was always in my mind that I was working harder than other people. I was just a kid thinking I was doing my dream. Maybe not everyone had the same dream I did.”
Kildow forced Sailer to revise his judgment. In a telephone interview, the coach said that by the time she was 12 she had become a better skier than another star pupil, Kristina Koznick, had been at that age. Koznick, 29, has gone on to win six World Cup races, make World Cup podiums 20 times and finish second twice in the World Cup season standings in slalom.
“Lindsey can be a superstar because of her guts and fearlessness,” Sailer said.
When that became evident after episodes like the downhill experience when she was 11, it also was clear that Buck Hill was too small for Kildow. Its most difficult run is 1,000 feet long with a vertical drop of 310 feet, a fine place to learn technique and train for the technical events, slalom and giant slalom, but not the speed events.
“If we wanted to develop her solely as a slalom and giant-slalom skier, she could have remained in Minnesota,” Alan Kildow said. “We recognized in Vail she had a raw talent for speed.”
Vail, he decided, was the place she could develop it. So the Kildows and their five children–including a girl 4 years younger than Lindsey and triplets, two boys and a girl, 6 years younger–moved there when Lindsey was 12 in 1997.
Family trouble
Alan Kildow commuted to his law practice in Minnesota. Lindsey’s mother, also an attorney, set up a private practice in Colorado. Lindsey went to high school by correspondence course, raced in the U.S. and Europe and made the national team at 15.
Five years later, she has begun to realize the impact that arrangement had on her family. Her parents and siblings moved back to the Minneapolis area in early summer 2002, about the time her mother filed for a divorce in which, Krohn said, “custody was the only issue.” The divorce was final 14 months ago, and the parents share custody.
“I don’t think my skiing was the reason [for the divorce], but it may have had something to do with it,” Lindsey said in a Jan. 20 telephone interview with the Tribune from Austria.
“Moving was hard for everyone. It was hard financially and put a lot of stress on my family.”
Kildow insisted she felt no extra pressure to succeed because of the upheaval her family went through to advance her career.
“I always felt like my family was behind me,” she said. “They all knew what I was doing and that I could really do something special.”
Her mother disagrees.
“I think she felt tremendous pressure to do well,” Krohn said. “But she never realized at the time how much pressure there was on me or the other kids.”
Lindsey Kildow understands. She regrets not telling her family how much she appreciated what they had done for her.
“I was pretty much a handful,” she said.
Her mother, who works both in sales and as an attorney, thinks the family got the message anyway because of the commitment Lindsey made to her skiing.
“She never stops,” Krohn said. “She won’t miss a day of working out.”
Alan Kildow, a national junior champion who did a few World Cup races before a knee injury ended his ski career at 18, meticulously plotted the steps in his daughter’s career. That has involved treading carefully near the line that separates support from stage managing, especially since Lindsey has an ease with the media and an overall allure that could translate into money-minting appeal.
“He has had a big impact on my racing,” she said. “Because of his own experience, he knew what races I needed to go to [to reach] the next level.”
At first, Sailer said, Lindsey’s drive owed mainly to her father’s insistence she could get better. Alan Kildow’s ambition motivated the coach to share his optimism.
“He led her for a while, but it wasn’t long before she took over,” Sailer said. “It’s all her now.”
By 17, Kildow had made the Olympic team. Her sixth place in the combined–a downhill run and two slalom runs–was the best ever for a U.S. woman in the Winter Olympics and the only top-10 finish by a U.S. woman in any alpine event at the 2002 Winter Games.
Earning respect
Her progress was slowed by an injury after the Olympics and a severe crash in December 2002 in a World Cup downhill at Lake Louise, Canada. Not until last January at Cortina, Italy, when Kildow finished fifth in one downhill and made her first World Cup podium with a third in another, did she begin to have a presence on the circuit.
But veteran World Cup stars like Renate Goitschel of Austria and Michaela Dorfmeister easily could consider those performances a fluke until Kildow won this season’s opening downhill at Lake Louise. Suddenly, the kid who turned 20 only in mid-October took on a larger dimension to the Austrians.
“They kind of gave me the hairy eye,” Kildow said to a media teleconference last week. “I think they knew I was coming, but not so fast. They were thinking I was this young girl who would be in there a couple times but not threatening them that much.”
Kildow has become a threat for this season’s titles in downhill and super-giant by going on to make the podium five times and finishing lower than fifth only twice in the next 10 races. She is third in the downhill standings and second in super-giant. Everyone else in the top five, including the 29-year-old Goitschel, is at least nine years older than Kildow.
“I’m not surprised by her performances,” said reigning Olympic downhill champion Carole Montillet-Carles, 31, of France. “During last season, she showed good stuff. She skis very well and she doesn’t question herself.”
Kildow did cry and then gave herself a tongue-lashing after a huge mistake led to an 18th-place finish in the last downhill before the worlds. With only two World Cup downhills left in the race for the crystal globe that goes to the season winner in each alpine discipline, it dropped her well behind Goitschel.
“I know I could have won today,” Kildow told the Associated Press immediately after the race. “It’s really disappointing.”
Within a few days, she had regained her composure and begun her final countdown to the world championship downhill Feb. 6. Kildow, hoping to make the podium in downhill and super-G and perhaps the combined, goes into her first senior world meet with the confidence of having finished second and fourth in downhills on the Santa Caterina course this year.
Future goals
“My goals have changed quite a bit because I have been so consistently in the top five,” she said. “I don’t want to say I am out of the running for the downhill globe, but my goals are definitely to win the super-G title and get [in the] top three in two events at worlds.
“Going into the season, I didn’t have that expectation, because I wasn’t expecting to be so consistent. [Now] my goals are pretty high but very attainable.”
Among them are to win a World Cup overall title. That will have to wait until after the 2006 Winter Olympics, when Kildow, sixth overall this season, can refocus on slalom and giant slalom.
This was the first time she did summer training with the speed specialists. It has showed in her excellent results in those disciplines and her poor results in the technical events. Kildow either failed to finish or failed to qualify for the second run in her first six slaloms and giant slaloms until a ninth place in giant and 11th in slalom last weekend.
“The small hill in Minnesota gave her the foundation to do it all,” Sailer said. “In modern skiing, you need the basic motions from slalom and giant slalom to be good in every event. She was a complete skier when she left here. At that point, her talent and energy and strength came into play.”
Kildow is making molehills out of mountains.
On the slopes
What: Biennial World Alpine Ski Championships, five events each for men and women: downhill, super-giant, combined, slalom, giant slalom.
Where: Bormio and Santa Caterina, Italy
When: Jan. 29-Feb. 13
Who to watch: The strongest U.S. team since the 1984 Winter Olympics, headlined by Bode Miller, men’s World Cup overall leader, and Lindsey Kildow, bidding for women’s World Cup titles in downhill and super-G. Austria’s Hermann Maier will be a focus of attention, as will the rest of their best-in-the world team, notably Benjamin Raich (slalom and giant), Michael Walchhofer (downhill and super-G), and Renate Goitschel (downhill and super-G). Other stars: Sweden’s Anja Paerson, a female Ingemar Stenmark; oft-injured Croat Janica Kostelic; and Italian veteran Kristian Ghedina, 35, who nearly died in a car accident a decade ago, trying to end his lengthy career (most World Cup downhill starts in history) with a fourth world meet medal.
They could be contenders
Based on top-10 finishes in the World Cup, the U.S. women go into the world championships with solid performers in every event.
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SKIER AGE BEST WORLD CUP RESULTS 2004-05
Lindsey Kildow 20 Downhill: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th; super-G: 2nd,
3rd, 4th; giant slalom: 9th
Kristina Koznick 29 Slalom: 2 2nds, 3rd, 5th, 6th, 10th; giant slalom: 4th
Resi Stiegler 19 Slalom: 8th, 10th
Julia Mancuso 20 Giant slalom: 4th, 5th, 6th; super-G: 5th, 9th;
downhill: 8th; slalom: 10th
Sarah Schleper 25 Giant slalom: 4th; slalom: 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 10th
Caroline Lalive 25 Super-G: 4th; downhill: 8th, two 9ths, 10th
Kirsten Clark 27 Downhill: 8th, 10th
Through Sunday
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