Bunny from B.C.

Canada's Nancy Greene, 23, weighs only 125 Ibs., and she can do 40 deep knee bends with a 170-lb. barbell across her shoulders. That ought to be enough to make her an intercollegiate weight-lifting champ. But Nancy uses her muscles on skis, and she does it better than any other woman in the world, as the French discovered to their distress last week.

The 1967 season was supposed to be a la France. At last year's world championships in Portillo, Chile, French women won eight out of twelve medals; and just this month, Coach Honore Bonnet told reporters that the only question was which of his two best girls--Marielle Goitschel or Annie Famose--would win this year's World Cup. That was before Nancy Greene spotted Annie almost a full second in the first run of the special slalom at Oberstaufen, Germany, two weeks ago, only to beat her by 2 sec. on the second trip down the course--and go on to complete a grand slam by winning the giant slalom next day. It was also before she beat Annie and Marielle in the giant slalom at Grindelwald in Switzerland last week, then flashed to a 1 1/2-sec. victory in the Grindelwald downhill, on a tough, 2,400-yd. course.

By week's end Nancy, a freshman at Notre Dame University of Nelson, B.C., had won four out of the five major European races so far this season. In competition for the World Cup, she had 100 points compared with 60 for Annie and 40 for Marielle Goitschel.

Into the Wall. Daughter of a mechanical engineer who put her on skis at the age of three, Nancy competed in the 1960 Olympics when she was 16, finished an unimpressive 22nd in the downhill. By 1964 at Innsbruck, she was up to 7th in the downhill. At Portillo last year, she was rated a cinch for a gold medal, after beating everybody in practice. Then, in the downhill, she slammed into a snow-packed retaining wall at 60 m.p.h., badly bruising her right arm. "She couldn't even lift her arm," recalls her coach, Verne Anderson, "but we couldn't keep her out of the giant slalom, so the doctor shot her full of Novocain, and I taped her ski pole to her glove." Nancy finished fourth, only 2.7 sec. behind Winner Marielle Goitschel.

Now Nancy feels fine, although she has to take cortisone shots for the pain in her still-damaged elbow, and she plans to remain in Europe for one more meet before heading home. "That's enough," she says--and the French would call that noblesse oblige.

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