Supermodel Carol Alt was reduced to tears yesterday during a courtroom face-off against her ex-hubby, former Ranger captain Ron Greschner.
The stunning, 47-year-old brunette had maintained her composure during more than an hour of grueling cross-examination in Manhattan federal court, where she’s suing Greschner for allegedly cheating her out of $9 million in investment profits during their 18-year marriage.
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But the former Sports Illustrated cover girl returned to the courtroom red-eyed and weepy, wiping away tears with a tissue before the trial resumed.
“It was just very emotional,” she told The Post. “I trusted this man. I loved him and revered him, and it’s like a death.”
Greschner, 53, chuckled softly when told of Alt’s comments.
“I’m past it,” he said. “I’ve got kids and things I’m doing. I wish her all the best with what she’s doing in life.”
But the former Broadway Blueshirt hockey star said he had no plans to buy a copy of the December Playboy magazine, where his ex is set to appear in a nude pictorial.
“I have no interest in seeing a 50-year-old woman naked,” Greschner said coldly. “My wife right now is 40 and hot, after five kids.”
Alt’s lawyer prepped the blue-eyed beauty for possible defeat after the daylong, nonjury trial wrapped up late yesterday.
Attorney Richard Roth told Alt that withering comments by Judge Colleen McMahon during closing arguments suggested the judge may buy Greschner’s contention that a six-year statute of limitations means Alt waited too long to file suit.
Alt sued Greschner last year for a share of $2.1 million worth of stocks that he got in a 1997 deal involving the sale of his brother-in-law’s Canadian water-filtration company.
In court papers, Alt has calculated that with interest, she’s due half of $18 million from the deal.
Greschner, who now lives in West Palm Beach, Fla., said he wouldn’t celebrate until after the judge’s verdict, which she’s set to deliver at 3 p.m. today.
“There’s nothing I can do,” the retired defenseman said. “I can’t jump over the boards and do anything.”
McMahon tossed thunderbolts from the bench throughout yesterday’s court proceedings, repeatedly blasting both sides.
“Like all judges, I hate matrimonial [cases]. I’d rather do a patent case,” she said at one point.
The tart-tongued jurist lashed into Greschner’s lawyer, Nancy Ledy-Gurren, over her assertion that her client couldn’t share the stock with Alt when he got it because of a two-year restriction on its sale.
“I’m not a dope, people sell restricted shares all the time,” McMahon said.
She also blasted Alt’s attorney over a report last week in The Post about court papers that revealed the couple divorced because Alt couldn’t conceive due to uterine and cervical cancer.
Roth said he “did not intend for the New York Post to pick up” on the details.
“Then you’re naive,” McMahon snapped back.
Greschner said outside court that he was unaware his wife had battled cancer, and thought she didn’t want kids because she was focused on her career.
Alt was taken aback by her ex’s remarks, saying Greschner paid her medical bills after she was diagnosed in 1990.