Sport: The Country Girls

Not since the heyday of Andrea Mead Lawrence have U.S. woman skiers offered notable competition for the talented European girls. But last week in the Austrian town of Kitzbühel, ski buffs were talking enthusiastically about a pair of pretty 20-year-olds from New England who have set the skiing fraternity on its ear. At Grindelwald, Switzerland, the week before, Penny Pitou had won the downhill and combined championships, and Betsy Snite had taken the giant slalom, finished second to Penny in the downhill. Bubbled Betsy: "We came to Kitzbühel to find ourselves famous, and I'm not sure I like that. We ski better when there is less commotion over a couple of ordinary simple country girls."

The country girls grew up not far apart, Penny in Gilford, N.H., Betsy in Norwich, Vt. Both were on skis early, Penny using barrel staves with canning-jar rubber bands nailed on for bindings, Betsy with a pair of toy skis. Both grew deadly serious about skiing, wangled time off from high school to attend meets. Both were good enough to make the 1956 Oympic team, where they ran headlong into the great European skiers. Working out on a slalom slope in Italy, they were passed by the French women's team. "They flashed by us like jet planes," Penny recalls. "Betsy and I just looked at each other, speechless. We thought we should have stayed at home." Neither of the girls did well in the Olympics. Says Penny philosophically: "All we did was get our first dose of higher education at Cortina."

But the girls kept at it doggedly, returned to Europe in 1957 to learn more. Slowly, they began to win events in minor meets. Penny got a job as an interpreter with an Austrian ski manufacturer; Betsy became a fashion model for a German sportswear shop. Penny, a husky, 140-lb. blonde, excels in the downhill; Betsy, whose brown hair is streaked with silver strands to accord with the current vogue for fashion models, is smaller and more nimble, does best in the slalom. They have modeled themselves on the style of Austrian men ("Only the boys have the drive and aggressiveness we want to copy," says Betsy). But having mastered style, both tend to disregard it. Says Penny: "Sometimes, when I am trying to slow down, I look like a Russian railroad track, five feet apart!"

At Kitzbühel last week, the two girls temporarily ran out of luck to go with their new fame. Betsy fell the first day and was out of the running. Penny finished second in the downhill, but ran into trouble near meet's end when she turned too sharply into a slalom gate, tumbled in the sticky snow. But neither of the country girls was discouraged. "Oh. well." sighed Penny, "that's the way the ball bounces."