Sochi Olympics: Stacey Cook sees another medal chance slip away

SOCHI, Russia -- American ski veteran Stacey J. Cook started to cry in the mixed zone after finishing 17th in Wednesday’s women’s Olympic downhill at Rosa Khutor.

It mostly had to do with what she wrote after “ambition” in her official biography for the Sochi Games: “To win an Olympic medal,” she wrote.

Cook didn’t win a medal Wednesday and, at age 29, probably has only one more Olympic chance -- Saturday’s women’s super G.

“The downhill is kind of the thing, though,” she lamented.

Cook thought this could be her year after finishing fifth in two pre-Olympic downhill races leading into the Sochi competition. In 2012, she twice finished second in World Cup races in Lake Louise, Canada.

She finished 11thin the 2010 Olympic downhill in Vancouver, Canada, but never quite trusted the line she had mapped out in Russia.

“Not the run I wanted,” Cook, a Mammoth-based racer, said. “Sometimes it’s just not enough. You put so much energy into it. It’s hard to swallow.”

What is the disappointment like?

“Turning it around on you guys, it’s like writing and writing and writing and writing and not a single one of your articles ever gets picked up, you know?” Cook said. “It’s hard to swallow
when you don’t get the reward.”

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