TORINO: Alpine: QA with slalom golden girl Anja Paerson

TORINO: Alpine: Q&A with slalom golden girl Anja Paerson{mosimage}These Games had a slow start for Sweden’s Anja Paerson, at least by her standards. After dedicating her season to these Olympics, a third in downhill, followed by a third in the combined, didn’t sit well. She was looking for more. She’s accustomed to the spotlight at the big events, having won four World Championships and Olympics gold medals, but it just wasn’t happening. She was visibly irked with the bronze in combined, and an 11th in the following super G added insult to injury. Her friend and rival, Janica Kostelic, speculated that perhaps she wanted the gold medal to much. Regardless, Paerson found a way to win. She did it her way. Some of her comments:

On getting a feeling:
What a day. I started off this morning waking up pretty early. It’s just one of those days when you have total harmony. I once had it at St. Anton … where I’m mentally in charge of my thoughts. It was just an amazing day.

On achieving her goal:
We set up a goal this year to try and achieve an Olympic gold medal. … It’s hard when you do five disciplines in both the World Cup and the Olympics. I tried last year and didn’t have the strength and this year we didn’t want to allow it. So we set up a different training schedule to try and achieve my highest point at the Olympics. It’s been a bit frustrating at the beginning of the week when it was snowing and I felt conditions were against me, but I felt my way to find the joy of skiing today.

On her emotions after winning:
People ask me what I think when I go through the finish line, but there are so many things, I don’t remember. When I come down, I’m mostly happy for my family, friends and coaches. We take it together.

On pushing the limits:
I think for a few years I was skiing for the overall. This takes away some of the joy. You are skiing for the points, and you ski below your limits. Coming into this year, I kind of realized that Aspen and all those races, I can ski every race and it doesn’t matter what happens. If I win a few, great, and if I don’t, it really doesn’t matter. … When you do the overalls you always think about what happens in March. Just to find that look in my eye again to go down the race hill again, like when I was younger, it’s amazing and I kind of needed it to come back here to the Olympics and find the joy in the skiing and attack.

On five gold medals at the major events, which ties her
with her idol, Ingemar Stenmark:
I just talked to Ingemar … it’s just something that I can’t even imagine; it’s just too big for me to tie Ingemar or whatever. … I’m just a small girl from a small town in Sweden. Sometimes I have to pinch myself to believe it’s true.

On changing servicemen:
It was a really difficult decision to change servicemen. … We had some great times, me and Slavo. We ended up winning the overall last year, but I needed a change. What happened with him is just the past now. It’s difficult when you don’t know the guy … you know he’s good, but he has to adjust to my technique and he’s not been on Salomon skis, so he had to learn a lot from the base. It’s been a rough year and we’ve had some disagreements, but in the end I trust him and in the downhill, we had really fast skis. I think he’s the one that works the most on the World Cup. He gets up at 3 or 4 in the morning. He was up there an hour before the start; I think he was pretty nervous at the start. It was a chance to take, but I think at the end I was happy that I did it.

On focus, focus, focus:
I don’t know, I think I had that feeling [harmony] twice, but this morning, it was tough. On the warm-up, I hurt my knee, and I felt that everything was slipping away. My father comes to me and says, OK, you’re going to skip the slalom and we’re just going to fight for the GS, but it wasn’t even a question that I would stop this race and go down to treat my knee. I knew from yesterday, the training wasn’t good, but coming up in the afternoon I did giant slalom and it was just perfect. Today I just stuck to my plan, and going up before the second run, I was alone in the chair and I dream about the gold, and then when you step off the lift you have to focus on your race. Dream about it and see how fun it is, and then just focus on what you need to do.