U.S. team's quest, still: 'best in the world'

ASPEN, Colo. -- When the Los Angeles Lakers start the season, do Kobe Bryant and Phil Jackson go, hey, let's try to just make the playoffs? Don't they aim for the NBA title?

When the New York Yankees assemble for spring training, what's their goal? Making the playoffs? Or winning the World Series?

When the Pittsburgh Steelers and the other NFL teams gather in July for those first two-a-days, what's the rally cry? Super Bowl! Right? (OK, not you, Oakland Raiders,  Cleveland Browns, Detroit Lions and St. Louis Rams. But everybody else.)

So why does it seem so brash to so many when the U.S. Ski Team declares its goal is to be the best in the world?

Isn't the ski team simply doing the very thing that those who would be champions have to do -- dream big?

"If you're going to be the best, you've got to shoot to be the best," Bill Marolt, the president and chief executive officer of the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Assn., said in an interview here amid a weekend of racing here, the one American stop on the women's alpine World Cup tour.

"If your goal, and that's what our vision is -- it's a goal, it's not a statement proclaiming ourselves to be that, it's simply a goal. It's no different than the football coach saying, 'Our goal is to win the national championship.' That's all we're doing. It's the same thing.

"You see coach after coach, program after program, and they always shoot for the top. That's what we're doing. What do we want to do? We want to announce that we want to be second? That's not the American way."

If anyone knows the American way, it's Bill Marolt. He grew up here, in Aspen. His brother, Max, competed in the 1960 Winter Games in Squaw Valley; Bill raced in the 1964 Winter Games, in Innsbruck, Austria, finishing 12th in the giant slalom.

Maybe in those days some might have seen as audacious the notion of Americans challenging the mighty Europeans -- even Americans from a place like Aspen, where it's just as natural to grow up on skis as it might be in Val d'Isere or Sestriere.

Even then, to be fair, that notion was slightly ridiculous. Of the top 12 in that 1964 giant slalom, two were American -- Billy Kidd in seventh, and Marolt.

At any rate, those days are long, long ago.

It's not outrageous for the United States of America's ski team to strive for excellence.

Indeed, the outrage would be if the American team settled for anything less than the best it could be.

And yet -- somehow, some way the idea that the Americans ought to aim to be anything less than best in the world rubs some the wrong way.

Let's be clear: That is ridiculous.

"It's interesting," Marolt said. "People are -- well, first of all, I think that was misinterpreted. I think the spin was put on it that we were declaring ourselves that.  That's not what we were doing. And frankly people were uncomfortable with doing that. It's not being boastful. It's not being braggadocious. It's just -- you want to make your organization world class. That's what we're trying to do.

"It's ambitious. It's hard. But it's the old cliché -- if it was easy, everybody'd do it. And I fully understand. When we say it, it's not like the other guys all around the world aren't saying the same thing. So we're all in the same boat here."

There are roughly three dozen Olympic sports federations in the United States. A handful come readily to mind when listing leaders in the field: swimming, track and field, gymnastics and skiing.

It's no secret why the ski federation is on that list. It's leadership and vision.

The vision thing is the "best in the world" slogan. You see its concrete manifestation in the newly opened Center for Excellence, the ski team's base and training center in Park City, Utah.

The leadership is Marolt-style -- drawn on his extensive experiences as athlete, then as outstanding coach, then as first-rate executive, as athletic director at the University of Colorado and at USSA.

You saw it this summer, when Bode Miller reached out, seeking after two years of competing as an independent to again be a part of the U.S. team. To make Bode's re-entry work, there needed to be all-around OK.  Marolt said, "We made it an open process. We wanted the staff to buy in. And then we talked it through as a team. Right? We said, 'OK, you guys, this is a team, we preach team. We want you to be part of this decision.' To a guy, they all said he's a good teammate, we want him on the team. "

Another example of Marolt-style leadership: After the 2006 Torino Winter Games, the U.S. team gathered for a staff retreat. Where? Vancouver.

There, as Marolt recalled it, they "affirmed our commitments to mission, vision, goals and values." He added, "From that point forward, we started to build our plan out."

The plan necessarily involves consistency and depth.

It's one thing to produce breakout alpine stars such as Miller and Ted Ligety, Lindsey Vonn and Julia Mancuso. It's another to develop up-and-comers such as 19-year-old Julia Ford. She drew her first World Cup start here in Sunday's slalom, finishing 44th in the first run.

If 44th doesn't sound awe-inspiring, consider that 24 of the 72 women in Round One didn't even make it down the super-icy course -- including Vonn, the two-time World Cup overall winner.

None of the American women finished in the top 30 and thus into the second run. That's a glitch. The last time the American women did not place at least one skier into a World Cup second run? Nearly two seasons ago, in January 2008, a slalom in Ofterschwang, Germany, according to the authoritative Hank McKee of Ski Racing magazine.

The depth on the American men's alpine team was already formidable; Miller simply made them deeper. The U.S. men put three finishers in the top 15 Sunday at a World Cup giant slalom in Lake Louise, Canada, with Ligety eighth, Andrew Weibrecht 12th and Marco Sullivan 15th. Miller, still working his way back into Bode shape, finished 39th.

U.S. snowboarders won gold in the halfpipe at the 2002 and 2006 Games, and are legitimate threats to win medals again in Vancouver.

And in snowboard-cross as well.

Freestyle, too.

The past few months, moreover, have seen the emergence of American medal contenders in the Nordic events. On Sunday in far-away Kuusamo, Finland, Kris Freeman finished fourth in a 15k cross-country classic, his best-ever World Cup finish.

The Vancouver Games are now 11 weeks away. Something would be seriously amiss if the U.S. ski team wasn't putting itself in position to try to be best in the world.

"Morale is high and the coaches and athletes are all positive," Marolt said. Then he added a nod to the obvious -- that you get to be the best by earning it. He said, "We've got to execute. We've got to compete."