Born to Luge
Georg Hackl is a techno whiz, Markus Prock is a natural athlete. The
Olympics have belonged to Hackl, the World Cup circuit to Prock. Now, the final
act of one of the greatest, if most obscure, rivalries in sports is about to
begin
by Tim Layden
Posted: Wed February 4, 1998
A celebration was readied on the Saturday afternoon last January when
the World Luge Championships concluded on a mountainside
above the tiny Austrian village of Igls. Just two sliders
remained in the men's singles competition, and it seemed
certain to the crowd
lining the icy track that Markus Prock, who lives only 10 miles
away in Mieders and had learned to slide at age 12 on this
very run, would hold his tiny first-run margin over Georg
Hackl of Germany and secure the world title. Prock's wife,
Christina, stood
near the finish, holding their 18-month-old daughter, Nina;
his parents, Brigitte and Peter, waited nearby. Many in the
crowd were friends and neighbors, willing Prock's
victory.
While Germany's Hackl (top) is only a so-so starter, Austria's Prock (below)is the
best in the business. HEINZ KLUETMEIER
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Yet a ripple of dread coursed through the audience when
Hackl began accelerating through ever-faster split times
down the 1,220-meter track and shot past the finish line in
49.236 seconds. It was the
fastest time of the second run by nearly a
quarter of a
second—hours, in luge terms—a statistic made implausible
by the condition of the course (ice turning to sled-slowing
slush) and by Hackl's pedestrian start (3.93 seconds for
approximately the first 20 meters, just the eighth fastest
of the
second run). Every previous slider on the final run had
struggled to hold his speed, yet Hackl had gotten faster as
he
approached the bottom. "Unbelievable," said U.S.
doubles slider Gordy Sheer as Hackl flashed past in the
finish area. "Where did that
time come from?"
HEINZ KLUETMEIER
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Moments later Prock screeched through the finish line
almost .3 of a second behind Hackl's time for the second
run. Silver medal. He knew it as soon as he gathered his
sled and turned to look at his family, coaches and
teammates. "They stood there and
said nothing," Prock recalled months later. "When
you win, they shout, they wave, they hug you. When you
lose, everybody is
quiet."
Prock had heard this silence before. At the 1994
Lillehammer Olympics, Hackl snatched the gold medal from
Prock on the last of four runs by a margin of .01. Two
years before that, at the
Albertville Games, Hackl led throughout the final day, leaving
Prock with the silver. Now, on this cold, gray afternoon in
the
Tyrolean Alps, Sheer's doubles
partner, Chris Thorpe, looked at Prock and shook his head. "My
god," he said. "He must have
nightmares."
PERHAPS
YOU'VE never heard their names: Markus Prock, Georg Hackl.
Perhaps you don't even know that luge is an Olympic sport
in which men and women lie on tiny sleds made of fiberglass
and
steel, and hurtle themselves down the
side
of a mountain in the trough of
a
twisting
channel of ice at speeds that can surpass 80 mph, steering
only with their toes, braking only when they reach the
finish. Fastest to the bottom wins. But even if you know
none of this, you know Hackl and Prock because you have
seen their kind in other
games, on other fields. One is blessed with size, strength,
speed and natural athleticism; the other is smaller, weaker
and slower, and out of his arena he might not be thought an
athlete at all. But when the stakes are highest, he
wins.
In eight of the last 11 years Prock, 33, has won the World
Cup overall title by accumulating the most points in a
season. These crowns underscore his consistency and support
the widespread assumption by his peers that there has never
been a more
gifted
slider. Hackl, 31, won the overall title back in 1989 and
'90 but not since. Yet it is Hackl who owns three Olympic
medals (the aforementioned two golds and a silver from
Calgary in 1988). And it is Prock who, after falling apart
and finishing 11th as a
23-year-old favorite in Calgary, has twice settled for the
silver behind Hackl. If you need a mainstream sports
translation, think of it this way: Prock is Dan Marino,
with all those records. Hackl is Joe Montana, with all
those rings. "The Olympics,"
says Prock mournfully, "they don't like me so
much."
Before he leaped into luging, the 6'1", 195-pound Prock was an outstanding
skier, soccer player and runner. ROLF KOSECKI
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The last act of this drama will be played out in Nagano.
Prock will again be the logical
favorite, bringing his consummate skills to war with his brittle
nerves. Hackl will again be his tormentor, lying as still
as death on his sled, blind to pressure
when it's
worst.
HACKL AND
PROCK
are children of the mountains, born and raised three hours
apart along the ribbon of the Alps that crosses central
Europe and
breeds passion for winter sports that are mere curiosities in the
U.S. Hackl's home has always been
Berchtesgaden, Germany, a
resort town in southern Bavaria, 90 miles from Munich and
nine miles from Salzburg, Austria.
Although it is infamous as the home
of Hitler's mountain retreat, Berchtesgaden is also a
wonderland of forest and pastures, carved by glacial
streams and
guarded
by 10,000-foot peaks on three sides. The centerpiece of the
region is the crystalline Königssee, a lake above
which curls the final traverse of the luge run on which
Hackl learned to
slide.
Continued
Issue date: February 9, 1998
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