1 Hannah Teter So cool, she won gold in the snowboarding half-pipe last week wearing her beloved iPod. Cooler still, she has the device on permanent shuffle, so she doesn’t know exactly what slab of shouty hip-hop or skatepunk comes next (“so long as it’s uplifting”). Alas, some dreary traditionalists have suggested her performances might be even better if she took the thing off and concentrated. As befits a woman for whom snowboarding is actually a sport, she’s as flaky as the Italian snow and almost missed the competition when she and her similarly cool fellow-American Gretchen Bleiler went off in search of virgin snow for some practice. As tends to happen with Americans abroad without a Starbucks to guide them home, the bright pair were soon lost. Teter relaxes, this may not be wholly surprising to hear, by reading any “spiritual” book or yoga magazine, but only by candlelight and ideally in a hot-tub. Still, cool or not, she’s a momma’s girl at heart, and when she’s not hot-tubbing she’s making unidentified but doubtless cool syrup with mom. Bless.
2 Alberto Tomba The three-time Olympic slalom champion, dubbed Tomba La Bomba by his fellow- Italians, handled the ladies as deftly as he did the mountains. Having already tried to seduce the traffic-stoppingly beautiful skater Katarina Witt — a bouquet of roses and the line “I too am an Olympic champion” failed to melt the ice queen — few were surprised that when he was asked to judge the Miss Italy contest, he spent that very night perfecting his après ski with the winner. When he was supposedly past his (skiing) peak at Lillehammer in 1994, there were rumours that his winter sports were affected by his less season-reliant escapades. “Not so,” he announced. “I used to have a wild time with three women until 5am. Now I am in training, it is five women until 3am.” He was denied gold by 0.15sec. These days Tomba has bombed and claims he doesn’t even have a girlfriend.
3 Bode Miller As this American sage commented on prime-time television shortly before the Olympics: “Skiing wasted is not easy, it’s like driving drunk, only there are no rules about it in ski racing.” And so speaks the voice of experience. The night before his Olympic downhill, this epitome of unshaven US cool was widely reported to be still knocking back the beer in a Sestrière bar at midnight. Momentarily breaking his own media blackout, the medal prospect denied the accusation, but the next day he was well beaten by France’s Antoine Deneriaz. Miller’s claims that “it would have taken a hurricane to get me in first” went down as well as the ninth pint on an empty stomach. And just to make Miller’s Olympics, he was disqualified from the slalom for straddling a gate.
4 Dick Button The American skating legend (gold medals in 1948 and 1952) is 76 this year, more cool than a Siberian ice rink in winter and the scourge of his sport’s etiquette, declaring its unfathomable new scoring system “constipated”, and that one, sadly unnamed, star skates with her arms so close to her body that she makes “armpit farts”. A brain injury precludes his appearances on the ice these days, but no matter, his mental faculties remain gloriously undimmed. The Harvard law graduate is an acerbic, straight-talking commentator who gave his country its version of the Superstars programme and appeared in The Bad News Bears Go To Japan, a film that was somehow overlooked on Oscar night. Think Sir Alan Sugar in tights (if you can bear to) and you’re pretty close.
5 Edgar Grospiron In a glittering career, the spring-heeled French icon won the first mogul (freestyle skiing) gold at Albertville in 1992, hordes of adoring fans breaking down the security fence lining the course and hoisting him on their shoulders in triumph. He also won the world championship in 1989, 1991 and 1995. Naturally, the French press was keen to know the secret of his success. He coolly attributed it to a specialist diet: “One week red wine, the next white wine.” A nation had found itself an instant hero and promptly made him a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur. These days he is whatever a motivational consultant is (presumably some of his advice relates to drinking copious quantities of wine, red or white) and organises such travelling extravaganzas as the Tam Tam Ski Show and the Pepsi Edgar Show.
6 Cathy Turner Having spent much of the 1980s as singer- songwriter Nikki Newland, Turner found record companies and the public immune to her charms. So in 1988 she overcame depression and returned to her first love, speed skating, winning gold for the United States in 1992 and 1994. Perhaps frustrated by her lack of singing success, the New Yorker became the terror of the rink, with a reputation for unrestrained use of the elbows at Lillehammer 1994. Her Canadian rival Nathalie Lambert sneered: “She is the dirtiest skater. Everybody is afraid of her. I hope she gets what she deserves: something bad.” Still, Turner’s minstrel soul could not be quelled, and after she won one of her golds she “entertained” the media by singing Sexy, Kinky Tomboy at her press conference. And as a natural rebel, she was once suspended for three months for hurling obscenities at her coaches. And she married a vet. Like, cool.
7 Ross Rebagliati Some say snowboarding is what marijuana fiends do for exercise. So when Ross Rebagliati tested positive in 1998 and had his gold medal taken away, there were few complaints. Except from the Canadian. Noting that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had no doping rules on cannabis, he claimed there was no legal basis for the disqualification and that the positive test was a result of the time he spent in a marijuana-rich environment. The IOC agreed. Cool use of the system, dude.
8 Jean-Claude Killy The handsome Frenchman was the first to make skiing cool after dropping his trousers at a Swiss event and then winning the downhill, slalom and giant slalom at the 1968 Games. He liked the ladies, appeared in films and completed the Paris-Dakar rally. Mr Versatility.
9 Billy Fiske In 1928 Fiske was 16 when he and four chums at a Swiss finishing school won bobsled gold in St Moritz on a sled called Satan. America’s youngest gold medallist did it again in 1932 at Lake Placid. Speed was the banking scion’s business and soon he was taking just 16 minutes in his Bentley to break the (unofficial) Cannes-Nice record. Naturally he was delighted when war broke out, although he’d just married Rosie, Countess of Warwick. After some administrative skulduggery, he became the RAF’s first American and was wounded in the Battle of Britain in 1940. He died from his injuries, but only after safely landing his Hurricane.
10 Lindsey Jacobellis There are those who think snowboarders are just rich kids trying to look cool. Enter Lindsey Jacobellis, the supercool American, at the Turin Olympics. Just two jumps remained in the snowboard cross event when she unnecessarily grabbed her board in mid-air and tumbled to the ice. A Swiss rider pipped her to gold. Was she bothered? No: “I was having fun. I wanted to share my enthusiasm with the crowd.”
