Slow downhill times

Press, 18 February 1980, Page 28

Slow downhill times

NZPA-Reuter Lake Placid, New York Anna Archibald, New Zealand’s only skier in the Olympic women’s downhill race, said yesterday that these might be her first and last Olympics. “I just seem to get worse and worse,” the Christchurch girl said. The times seemed to bear her out. Her first runs on Saturday were timed at 1:51.24, 1:53.95, and 1:54.22, and yesterday she was down to 1:55.46. For all that, the 20-year-old is enjoying the Games. “It’s one hell of. a good experience,” she said.

Miss Archibald already races in the World Cup downhill circuit. “But I don’t think I shall be around by the next Olympics. There are more important things to do than ski-ing. I think I would have shown by now if I was going to make it to the top,” she said. Miss Archibald said that when she gave up competitive ski-ing she would “go back and use my brain again,” and continue her studies. Anne-Marie Moser, of Austria, the six times World Cup winner but never an

Olympic champion, held on to the fastest practice time at the end of training for today’s race, but most of the competitors thought her chief rival, Marie-Therese Nadig, of Switzerland, was “foxing.” With up to a foot (30 centimetres) of new snow on the edge of the course and with more snow falling during the run, no one got anywhere near Miss Moser’s time on Saturday of one minute 42.29 seconds foi; the 2698-metre run. Miss Nadig’s best effort is 1:44.28, also produced on Saturday.