Skiing: Kostelic fails in bid to win on home run

Ivica Kostelic has won a world title, three Olympic medals, one slalom crystal globe and 12 World Cup races yet the Croat again failed to win one of the races that matter most to him at home in Zagreb yesterday.

"I'll never make it!" he shouted in the finish area after finishing second to Swede Andre Myhrer by just a tenth of a second in a floodlit slalom.

It was the third time in four attempts that the brother of ski star Janica, the country's most successful athlete, had filled the runner-up spot on the very hill on which he learnt to ski.

"It is not easy. No other skier is under as much pressure as I am because Austrians can afford to crash out, there are a dozen others to avenge them. I'm on my own here," he said.

Kostelic blamed over-caution for his inability to beat Myhrer's winning combined time of one minute and 52.74 seconds. "I just cannot afford to go out here or the crowd would be too disappointed," he said.

Tension was high in the finish area where sister Janica, his girlfriend and his mother, nervously playing with a rosary, were watching his second leg run amongst a partisan crowd of 15,000.

"I'm not disappointed. I just would love to win it one day," said Kostelic, winner of a slalom in Munich last weekend.