Sensitive subject

Press, 24 February 1988, Page 33

Sensitive subject

By

TIM DUNBAR

in Calgary Safety pins are still a sensitive subject for Sigrid Wolf, who provided Austria with its third alpine ski-ing gold medal of the Calgary Winter Games yesterday. Wolf, from Austria’s Tirol, won the Olympic women’s super-G by a full second at Nakiska, but she is still upset about being denied a World Cup gold medal in the same discipline six weeks ago. After recording the best time in a World Cup super-G at Lecht, Austria, Wolf was disqualified along with three of her team-mates for using a safety pin on her bib.

“I always try to forget this,” she said. “I know I can go very fast in super-G.” The protest, from what source Wolf is still not certain, took advantage of a reference in the F.I.S. rule-book to not being allowed “to do anything to your bib.” At Nakiska, the 24 year old had the same bib number, 12, but this time there was no superfluous hardware. “At the top, I didn’t ski my best, but way down below, I made no errors,” Wolf told NZPA. Asked about how the Austrians had felt coming into the Games in the shadow of the highlytouted Swiss squad, she said: “We knew we were

good, and if we had good luck, we’d win races.” With three gold medals after six alpine events, Austria was humbling the heavily-favoured Swiss, who have only one gold so far, in the men’s downhill. The top 10 places in the women’s super-G were: Wolf, 1; Michela Figini (Switzerland), 2; Karen Percy (Canada), 3; Regine Moesenlechner (West Germany), 4; Anita Wachter (Austria), 5; Maria Walliser (Switzerland), 6; Micaela Marzola (Italy), and Zoe Haas (Switzerland), 7 equal; Edith Thys (United States), 9; Christ Kinshofer Guetlein (West Germany) and Michaela Gerg (West Germany), 10 equal.