By posting a slalom margin of more than a full second and overcoming a fear of the downhill heightened by a multitude of knee injuries over the past two seasons, Janica Kostelic won the first Olympic medal in the short history of Croatia, and made it gold.

Kostelic claimed the slalom leg of the Olympic women's combined handily with Germany's Martina Ertl finishing 2nd and Marlies Oester of Switzerland a distant 3rd, more than two seconds behind.

Austrian Renate Goetschl finished 4th in the slalom portion, but won the downhill leg of the three-run event by more than a half second to collect her second Olympic medal in three days, the combined silver.

"I didn't expect I could make two medals at first, one in downhill and one in combined, so I think I can really relax in the super-G," Goetschl said. "My goal was one medal, and now I have two of them. But there's one or two more races, so I will try again." Ertl continued her trend of skiing well in big events and added the combined bronze to a collection that includes the Olympic silver she won in the discipline at Nagano in 1998 and the World Championships combined title she claimed last season.

Ultimately, however, the day belonged to Kostelic. The young skiing has star already has won 10 World Cup slalom events, but a pair of knee surgeries in the past two seasons has increased her fear of the speed disciplines. Because of high winds, the slalom portion of the event was moved in front of the downhill in order to give the weather a chance to break.

Kostelic took a commanding lead in the race's technical portion, but had doubts entering the speed portion.

"I didn't think I was enough ahead of Goetschl and Ertl because I haven't skied really good in the downhill training runs," she said. "I thought it was not really enough, but that it was going to be a really exciting race. I had a really good downhill run. It was really fast."

Goetschl agreed, tipping her hat to the champion at the race's end. "My downhill was a very good one," Goetschl said. "Kostelic was unbeatable today."

Lindsey Kildow had a surprisingly good downhill run to post the best American result in women's combined, sixth place. Top U.S. hopeful Caroline Lalive fell in her first slalom run and had to hike back up the hill to make a gate, effectively eliminating her from contention before the start of the downhill.

—Scott Willoughby, MountainZone.com Correspondent