Athlete profile: Christian Mayer

Posted: Tue February 3, 1998 at 5:00 PM ET

Athlete notes

Don't bother talking to Mayer between the two giant slalom runs at the Olympics this year...he knows better...in Lillehammer, Mayer recorded the fastest first run of the day by a whopping one minute and 45 seconds, only to be shaken up by an Austrian coach's comments in the starting tent..."The start of the second run was delayed an hour and I was keeping warm and staying very loose," says Mayer. "A coach came up to me and said, ‘Christian, how can you be so relaxed? Austria has no Olympic champion in giant slalom since 38 years.' Then I started to think about this"...Mayer wound up with a bronze medal that day, surpassed by Switzerland's Urs Kaelin and Germany's Markus Wasmeier, who recorded a scintillating second run..."Still, I was very happy," explains Mayer about the bronze. "It was the alpine team's first medal of the Games and we had a very disappointing Olympics"...the Austrian media expects a lot of its skiers and Mayer has struggled a little since Lillehammer..."They [the media] say, ‘hey you have a lot of podiums, you must have more top results,'" says Mayer. "The press puts a lot of pressure on you"...Mayer had a good showing in 1996, placing in the top 10 of both races at the World Championships in Sierra Nevada, Spain...last year, Mayer could not find the podium all season but he showed he was dangerous in the combined -- finishing a close fourth in Sestriere, Italy at the Worlds...but in December 1997 in Alta Badia, Italy, Mayer ended a four-year victory drought...his only previous triumph had been at a giant slalom in Val d'Isere, Italy in 1993..."I risked everything," he said. "I knew I could go out, but I still pushed hard"...then Mayer won the first Events of the new year, a giant slalom in Kranjska Gora, Slovenia -- just 15 miles across the border from his hometown of Finkenstein...Mayer credits much of his success this season to changing skis over the summer..."I was always two seconds behind the rest of the Austrian team in training, and then I borrowed Siegfried Voglreiter's skis for just one run and I set the best time. I went home and said, `that's it'"...Alta Badia is where Mayer made his World Cup debut in 1990...Mayer began skiing at the tender age of two, and was competing in his first race at age six...he is now concentrating on the technical events, as well as combined -- one of the only events which has a relative dearth of Austrian skiers...Mayer attended ski school in Schladming and is now in the Austrian army's sport corps...his ski hero growing up was the late Austrian Rudi Nierlich, who won three World Championship gold medals before dying in a tragic car accident following the 1991 season..."He was a good hero for me," says Mayer. "It was a tragedy, I knew him a little, I would speak with him when he came to the [lower-level] races I was in"...Mayer almost became too much like Nierlich, as he cheated death in two horrific car crashes last summer..."My first crash was during a car rally in June," he said. "We were going 180 kilometers per hour down a street and then I missed a bend and hit a tree at 140 kilometers per hour. I spent two days in the hospital because they feared I had internal injuries, and I had such a big headache. The second crash was a month later. I was on my way to Vienna for a charity [soccer] match when a lorry came across into our lane in a tunnel. I reacted quickly, and I was lucky. The car was destroyed"...Mayer was an excellent soccer player as a youth, competing for the junior team of his province of Carinthia...his team participated in international competitions...he gave up soccer because he felt skiing provided the opportunity to make money...he also enjoys tennis and windsurfing and recently bought a jet ski, which he takes to the Adriatic sea just an hour away...his father is a train engineer and his mother drives a tractor on a farm...he speaks good English, but he probably will not speak it between runs...