Who is picabo street

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Championships two years later. By , Picabo Street was ranked eighth in the world. Two years later, she had her first taste of Olympic victory, securing a silver medal in the downhill competition. Also in , Street became the first American woman to win the World Cup women's downhill competition. She earned the top spot again in downhill at the World Cup in , but later endangered her dreams of Olympic gold when she injured her knee during a training run.

The recovery process--which included surgery and physical therapy--was long and difficult, but Picabo Street made it back to fighting form by the time of the Winter Olympics.

All her hard work paid off. She won the gold medal in the Super G event. Unfortunately, Picabo Street didn't have long to savor her victory when tragedy struck again at the World Cup in March During the competition, she slammed into a fence, breaking her leg in multiple places. Street had to endure several operations to fix the leg and was out of competition for more than a year. Despite this setback, she refused to give up and, after her recovery, committed herself to training. Street qualified for the Olympic Games.

Knocked unconscious, Street was able to walk away under her own power. Although she suffered a concussion, Street remained upbeat going into Nagano. I took confidence out of that incident. Adversity makes heroes. A few weeks later, Street became a hero when, ignoring headaches and neck pain, she captured her life-long dream: a gold medal at the Olympics. What makes the accomplishment even more remarkable is that she did it in the super giant slalom Super G , an event in which she had never won a World Cup race -- even if it was by the slimmest of margins.

Five days later in the downhill which had been delayed for two days because of rain , Picabo skied in an uncharacteristically cautious manner on a slushy surface and finished sixth overall, missing a bronze medal by. Later that season, Picabo once again was faced with adversity, and this time it nearly ended her career. During a World Cup downhill race in Switzerland, she misread a bump and slammed into a fence at 70 mph.

To heighten the irony, the date was March 13, It was a devastating injury. Her left femur was broken in nine places. To make matters worse, she also tore the ACL in her right knee. Nearly 28 at the time, Picabo's return to competitive world class skiing did not appear bright. The road back has been a long, winding one. After two more years of rehab, Street placed 34th in her first race back, a Super G, in St. Moritz, Switzerland, in December Next came a 24th, a 46th and a 15th.

In February , Picabo captured the attention of the ski world by turning in a 7th-place finish at a World Cup downhill in Lenzerheide, Switzerland, followed by a 5th in Lake Louise, Alberta, Canada.

Then, in March, her comeback seemed complete when she won a Super Series downhill event in Snowbasin, Utah.