WINTER OLYMPICS / NOTEBOOK

Downhill ski racers are a strange breed and don’t deny it.

While the rest of the world looks forward to the Olympics, you suspect some skiers almost consider it a nuisance--merely the most crowded stop on a whirlwind European tour.

Luxembourg’s Marc Girardelli, one of the greatest ski racers ever, has long maintained that winning Olympic gold is not important to him.

Coincidentally, perhaps, he has not won a gold medal.

AJ Kitt, the veteran U.S. downhiller, tried to explain the concept to reporters in a news conference to preview Sunday’s first Alpine event, the men’s downhill.

The race is expected to attract 38,000 spectators.

“If you want to be remembered as a great ski racer, be renowned with your peers, win Kitzbuehel (Austria) or Wengen (Switzerland),” he said. “If you want to be remembered by everyone else, win the Olympics.”

The meat-and-potatoes portion of ski racers’ careers, the World Cup circuit, is largely ignored outside of Europe.

The racers contend that the only time anyone cares about them is Olympic time. When Kitt finished ninth in the 1992 Albertville Games, a relatively pleasing result to him, people came up to console him.

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The death of Ulrike Maier on Jan. 30 still weighs heavily on international skiers. The Austrian star died after crashing on the downhill course at Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany.

Kitt concedes that danger is part of the sport and is of the opinion that course safety has greatly improved in recent years. He was critical, though, of the placement of a timing post on the Garmisch course. Maier’s head struck the post.

“We have to make sure that never, ever happens again,” Kitt said.

Kitt was relieved that a men’s downhill, scheduled at Garmisch four days after Maier’s death, was canceled.

“It would have been hard to go 80 m.p.h. past that part of the course, and not think about what happened to Ulrike Maier,” he said.

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On the other hand, Paul Major, the U.S. Alpine director, said Maier’s death will not make his skiers skittish.

“It’s not so much the safety,” Major said. “They’re shaken more because of the death itself. She was a star of the sport, a mother, a great person, too. That’s the shocking part. But the racers are not looking at the course going, ‘Where am I going to fall and hurt myself.’ ”

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Major said there was no serious discussion about leaving Diann Roffe-Steinrotter off the U.S. team.

Roffe-Steinrotter, the 1992 Olympic giant slalom silver medalist, has struggled since the Albertville Games and ranks 30th in the current World Cup GS standings and 60th in the World Cup overall.

“She’s scored across the board in GS and super-G,” Major said. “Not great, but she could pop one at any time. . . . She just hasn’t put it together yet, but the one that counts hasn’t come yet.”