Vonn's Olympics end with disappointment in slalom

VANCOUVER - When it was over, all the hype, all the promise, boiled down to two medals for cover girl and swimsuit model Lindsey Vonn.

Yesterday, she hit mushy snow, straddled an early gate and skied out of the first run of the slalom, the third time in her five events she did not finish a course. She crashed on Wednesday in the first run of the giant slalom, fracturing her right pinkie. Last week, she did not finish the slalom portion of the super-combined - her only apparent regret.

"I know I could have had more medals, like in the super-combined, where I went out," Vonn said. "But you have to attack and you have to take risks."

Considering the increasingly inconsistent conditions on a warm and foggy Whistler Creekside facility, that philosophy might have been flawed, especially in the more technical races, where Vonn failed.

Vonn won the downhill and the super-G, a promising start to an Olympics that featured her worldwide as the fetching Face of the Games. She was not expected to medal in the slalom, especially after Wednesday's crash battered an already beat-up body. Besides the fractured finger, she jarred her chin, hip and back, adding to a shin injury that cost her a week of training before the Games and that threatened to knock her out of all five races.

Yesterday, she believed she needed to be perfect in the slalom. "I came out of the starting gate charging," she said. "But I haven't been skiing a lot of slalom. I hit some mashed-potato snow, and it was over before I knew it."

All things considered, she said, these Winter Games weren't so bad. "Even though today and the GS wasn't a success, I'm happy with the way my Olympics has gone," she said. "I have a gold in the downhill and super-G, and I couldn't ask for any more."

Those two medals helped the U.S. ski team to a team-record eight medals, and counting.

Self-styled rebel Bode Miller, already the winner of three medals, skis the slalom tomorrow, the final event on the mountain.

Germany's Maria Riesch won the slalom. She was followed by Marlies Schild, of Austria, and Sarka Zahrobska, of the Czech Republic . . . With Katherine Reutter's silver in the 1,000-meter short-track speedskating and the men's bronze in the 5,000 relay last night, the U.S. tied its national record of 34 medals, set in 2002 at Salt Lake City, and will match the all-time record of 36, set by Germany that year. The men's speedskating long-track pursuit team is in today's final, and the men's hockey team is in the gold-medal game tomorrow. The women's pursuit team is in the semifinals. The USA-1 bobsled team leads the field after two heats, with the final two coming today. The U.S. has led the Winter Games medal count only once, when it won 12 in 1932 at Lake Placid . . . Reutter's 1,000 was her second medal; she finished just behind China's Wang Meng. Reutter won bronze with the women's 3,000 relay team on Wednesday – a team that included Allison Baver, who was raised outside of Reading. Reutter, whose leg was signed by Stephen Colbert, collided with Baver last year in a crash that broke Baver's leg. *