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Will he be back? Here's hoping the Herminator can return to the slopes
The news reached me late last Friday afternoon, shortly before it hit the wire services and the vast realm of the Internet. For several weeks, I had been trying to arrange a pre-2002 Olympics interview with Hermann Maier, the 28-year-old Austrian who has been, for the past five years, the best alpine skier in the world. Just last Tuesday, with help from intermediaries on this continent and others (never let anyone tell you that the business of arranging celebrity interviews is routine), it was agreed that I would meet with Maier later this fall, perhaps during glacier training, perhaps in his small hometown of Flachau, where I had met his family and friends for a similar story prior to the 1998 Games. Then came Friday's e-mail from a European ski afficionado. Maier had collided with a car while riding his motorcycle. His leg was broken, muscle tissue badly damaged. Might never race again. My heart sank, and not because I would miss out on the chance to write once again about a transcendent performer (although I'll miss that, too). Further reports were ominous, mentioning the possibility of infection and amputation. Even as that passed, and recovery began, the Herminator's career seemed very much in jeopardy. It is nasty news. First, because a human being was nearly killed and is now fighting to ensure that he will walk again. Period. What's more, we still don't know whether it was Maier or a 73-year-old German man who caused the accident. Or neither of them. On the lower plane of athletics, assuming Maier will not be able to ski in Salt Lake City, the accident robs him of an opportunity to perform on the biggest stage of his career, at the peak of his powers. Backtrack: Maier exploded late in the winter of 1997, a phenomenal talent who slipped through the cracks of the Austrian system and worked as a bricklayer while climbing through the minor leagues to prominence. (This was always a sore spot among Austrian officials. In '98 I described the lot of them as loathe to be remembered like the coaches who cut a teenaged Michael Jordan; national teams coach Werner Margreiter, a bright, hardworking man, insisted on a long sitdown in Nagano to correct me. We agreed to disagree.) Margreiter did educate me at length on Maier's revolutionary style, a daring attack on the mountain, taking a straighter line than any racer in history. "Exciting," Margreiter called it, a masterpiece of understatement.
Maier won his first World Cup in '97 and has since won three World Cup overall titles ('98, '00 and '01). Last season he won 13 World Cup races, tying the legendary Ingemar Stenmark's single-season record. Maier has 41 World Cup wins, fourth-most in history and nearly halfway to the great Pirmin Zurbriggen's record of 86. He has -- had? -- a very good shot at catching Zurbriggen. Yet none of the numbers capture the essence of Maier. A funny, self-effacing man who likes to make fun of his expanding forehead and his occasional crashes, Maier the skier is an act not to be missed. In Nagano he won gold medals in the Super G and giant slalom, yet it was his spectacular, flying wipeout in the downhill ("Not like Lufthansa," he said afterward) that is most remembered. I watched it from the bottom of the run on a giant screen and, like so many others on the hill that day, I had to blink my eyes to believe what I had seen. Point is: Maier skis hard, nothing held back. Which brings us to Salt Lake City. The Winter Olympics are a dicey proposition, TV-audience-wise. (Based on Sydney's numbers, so, apparently, are the Summer Games.) A favorable time zone will help these Games, but whom do you, as a fan, want to see in the Wasatch? Michelle Kwan? Hockey players? OK, fair enough. But Maier was (is?) among the very few big names in the Winter Games. If he's there, you don't want to miss his races. If he's not, there's a hole the size of Toronto. No way I'm counting the guy out of Salt Lake City. In Nagano, he climbed out of a snowback, battered like he'd jumped off a building, and won two gold medals. But the news this time is more ominous, the odds much longer.
Sports Illustrated senior writer Tim Layden is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com. Click here to send him a question or comment.
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