Athlete profile: Urs Kälin

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

Athlete notes

Kälin saved the 1994 Winter Olympics for the Swiss men's ski team, prEventsing it from being shut out of the medals for the first time since 1964...wearing the famous yellow Swiss cheese ski suit, Kälin skied solidly and clocked in just two-hundredths of a second behind the winner, Markus Wasmeier of Germany...it was the slimmest margin of victory since 1972, when Barbara Cochran of the United States won slalom gold in Japan by the same margin...Kälin has kept up his good form on the World Cup circuit, winning the silver medal in the GS at the 1996 World Championships and finishing second to countrymen Michael von Grünigen in the overall GS standings that same year...focusing exclusively on giant slalom has helped Kälin, who used to race the Super G along with the more technical GS...Kälin used to focus his efforts on wrestling...the diminutive Kälin wrestled for six years -- in 1987 he placed fifth in the Swiss Championships in the 68-kilogram weight class -- before a town knee ligament ended his days as a grappler..."I still go a lot to watch wrestling matches," says Kälin, who balanced wrestling with his skiing career. "I only did it for fun at first"...he enjoys comparing the mental approach to skiing and wrestling..."The difference is in skiing, you don't have an opponent," he says. "Just the slope. But in both sports, anxiety is you opponent"...with a medal under his belt and a solid first half of the World Cup season, anxiety should not be a problem for the veteran skier...Kälin lives in Bennau, a town of 600 people about 25 miles south of Zürich..."I know almost everyone in town," Kälin says...it seems nearly half the town belongs to his unofficial fan club, which arrives at competitions with the traditional cow bells...there are 60 families in Bennau with the last name of Kälin...Bennau native, Alois Kälin, no relation, won the nordic combined sliver at the 1968 Grenoble Olympics...at home, Kälin learned to ski on slopes 100 yards from the family house..."We skied to school, then back home for lunch, then to school again and then back home," Urs recalls fondly...Kälin is known as a workaholic who believes "skiing one run too many is better than skiing one too few in training"...he has been trying out the English he has acquired through trips to England and the US...he has spent several weeks in the US sightseeing, staying in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Lake Tahoe and Vegas as well as visiting Yosemite and Death Valley...he still considers wrestling one of his hobbies, along with soccer...