Athlete profile: Morena Gallizio

Posted: Tue February 3, 1998 at 5:00 PM ET

Athlete notes

Four years ago, Gallizio was a young phenom in Lillehammer, placing in the top 10 in three events...while most expected her rapid ascent to the ranks of the great all-around skiers to continue, Gallizio hit a wall and was unable to crack the top 10 in any World Cup Events for nearly three full seasons...she refocused by dropping all but the slalom and the combined from her repertoire and showed a flash of her old self at last year's World Championships in Sestriere, Italy...Gallizio finished sEventsh in the slalom and fourth in the combined, including a win in the slalom portion...."It was hard trying to do all four events," says Gallizio, who decided to specialize at an earlier age than many all-around skiers who choose to drop disciplines as they grow older. "It takes a lot of time to do all four so I decided to focus on one thing and try to get good results"...success at major events is nothing new for Gallizio...as a 19 year-old, Gallizio, then in the midst of her first World Cup season, finished fifth in the slalom and ninth in the combined at the 1993 World Championships...she also posted the only three podium finishes of her career that season and finished in the top 10, 12 other times...the next year she put together one of the best performances in the Lillehammer alpine events among the non-medalists..."You come to the Olympics and maybe there's some newcomer," explains Gallizio of the surprising results of herself and other youngsters like teammate Isolde Kostner, who won two bronze medals. "Sometimes people come (there) with results and are sometimes disappointed"...Gallizio enjoyed four top-15 finishes in Lillehammer -- with her best result a fourth in the combined...her carefree skiing style, jovial personality, and seemingly unlimited potential made Gallizio an early favorite of the Italian spaghetti press..."Morena is a cowboy," says Pierangelo Molinaro, a writer for La Gazzetta della Sport. "She goes into the race just to win. She's an egotist and that's one of the most important characteristics of a champion"...Molinaro had even envisioned a budding rivalry between Gallizio and Italian megastar Deborah Compagnoni -- "Those two will go to war. They are too similar in skiing, too different in nature to be friends," he said, referring to Gallizio's outgoing, plucky personality, much in contrast to Compagnoni's relatively taciturn nature...Gallizio's extrovertedness is dictated largely by her enormous command of language...she speaks French, German, and English in addition to her native Italian...Morena used to speak German at home; her mother, a homemaker, is from northern Italy, where many people speak German as their first language...she learned French and English at school and university -- she also spent a month each in France and England several years ago...she also knows Latin but astutely points out, "You can't speak to too many people in a dead language"...her father is a retired sheriff who started to take Morena skiing with him when she was four...she began to compete at the age of six and started out in the technical events..."The only thing you could do where we lived was slalom," explains Morena. "There was not much snow"...she has two younger siblings -- a 20 year-old sister Tamara and an 11 year-old brother Thomas...even with her success toward the end of last season, Gallizio refuses to overemphasize Nagano, her third Olympic competition..."My goal is to enter the first group in the slalom," says Morena, recognizing that last year was the first in which the slalom was her only base discipline. "Then I hope to go the Nagano and win a medal in the slalom and the combined also"...while some combined skiers work to balance their training in the downhill and slalom parts of the Events, Gallizio is clearly more concerned with the technical side of her skiing..."I don't spend so much time in my downhill training," she says. "Sometimes I train downhill in the morning but I still do slalom in the afternoon to keep my quickness. I also have to concentrate on timing in the curves. I'm trying to do it more naturally"...Gallizio's favorite hobby is collecting coins -- "I like to collect rare coins and also coins from different countries," she says...she also likes to play volleyball and spend time in nature...