Wave hello, say goodbye
Herminator, Katja, and Picabo create special skiing moments
Posted: Thursday December 31, 1998 04:12 PM
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Maier emerged from a violent crash at Nagano to win a gold medal AP |
MAMMOTH MOUNTAIN, California (AP) -- Hermann "The Herminator" Maier and Katja Seizinger provided year-long quality. Picabo Street and Alberto Tomba tugged at hearts of the skiing world.
Maier, Austria's Racing Bricklayer, gave the men's Alpine World Cup tour a new star just as the old one, Tomba, called it a career. Seizinger vaulted into the sport's top echelon with a second overall title and became the first skier to retain an Olympic downhill crown.
Street, whose fast skis and quick mouth made her the Tomba of the women's tour, showed she also had the Italian's flair for the dramatic when she won the most unlikely gold medal of the Olympic Winter Games to Nagano, Japan.
Yet the one picture of the Olympics, and of the season, was of Maier's somersaulting crash in the downhill at Nagano. He landed on his helmeted head, crashed through two supposedly racer-proof crash fences and down a gully into a snowdrift. Incredibly, he emerged in one piece, rising unsteadily to his feet and waving his ski poles to a crowd that seconds before thought he was vaulting to his death.
Getting to his feet was only the first part of the drama. Two days later, despite bruises and sore muscles, Maier won the Super G slalom and capped his games by adding the giant slalom title. And he did it all with a grin on his face. After all, this was a guy who was booted off the Austrian team years before because he was too scrawny, only to use stints as a ski instructor and a bricklayer to make him a powerful and versatile racer.
Before and after the Olympics, Maier was almost unbeatable, winning 10 times and finishing among the top three an incredible 19 times in 23 events. He won the first four Super G races of the season and prevailed in a season-long battle with Switzerland's Michael von Gruenigen in the giant slalom. Maier lost the downhill title in large part because he missed four races due to injury, too big an advantage to give to a superb skier like teammate Andreas Schifferer.
Maier carved a niche in the record book when he became the first skier to have a victory taken away for violating the rule against finish-area advertising. After completing a winning GS run at Val d'Isere, France, Maier stepped out his skis and put them to his shoulder, a practice every racer has mastered as payback to the sponsors who provide their high-tech hardware. Maier's sin was to take his skis off too soon, before crossing the red line in the finish area where unstrapping is allowed.
As it turned out, the lost victory didn't cost him a thing, although he had to go an extra week before officially clinching the overall title.
Seizinger was just as dominant on the women's side, claiming her fourth downhill championship and fifth Super G title along with an overall trophy to add to one she earned in 1996.
What was different this time around was the smile. For years, the German was admired but hardly loved. In 1998, she displayed a sunny personality that pulled in fans like a magnet.
Why the change?
"I found love," she said.
Turns out the German coaches, ever striving for an edge, put Seizinger and the rest of the troops through a series of death-defying stunts so they'd think skiing down an icy trail at 110 kph (70 mph) was tame stuff. One of the tests was skydiving and Seizinger found her man on the other side of the tandem chute with which she made her first jump.
Street stole some of Seizinger's thunder by winning the Olympic Super G, completing a year-long comeback from a severe knee injury. The celebration was still going on when Seizinger got revenge with a smashing victory in the downhill, followed with gold in combined and added a giant slalom bronze for good measure.
As the year ended, Seizinger and Street were both staring forced retirement square in the eyes after devastating knee injuries.
Tomba, Italy's gift to skiing for the past decade, went out like the champion he so often was by winning the last slalom of his career. It was victory No. 50, the second-highest total in history (Sweden's Ingemar Stenmark won 86) and allowed Tomba that rarest of athletic achievements: leaving on his own terms.
Two of the best stories of the season involved Austria's Stephan Eberharter and Sweden's Ylva Nowen. Failure, not victory, had been the companion of each through many long winters, with Eberharter actually being tossed off the team and Nowen almost deciding to begin that long-delayed college education.
Eberharter came back through the Europa Cup, skiing's minor leagues, to earn another chance, and made the most of it, getting his first race victory and vaulting to third behind Maier and Schifferer in the overall standings. And Nowen won four times on the way to collecting the season slalom title, becoming the only non-German speaker to win a World Cup title.
In the Nordic world, Bjorn Daehlie of became history's winningest Winter Olympian by winning the prestigious 50-kilometer race, his eighth gold medal in three Olympics since 1992 and third in the Nagano Games.
"I think it was my hardest race ever," he said.
Russia swept all women's Olympic races, Larissa Lazutina leading the team with three golds, a silver and a bronze.
Thomas Alsgaard, another Norwegian, captured the season-long World Cup title for the first time with Daehlie finishing second. No other skier has more World Cup victories (42nd) than Daehlie.
On the women's side, Lazutina finished ahead of Bente Martinsen of Norway.
In ski jumping, Kazuyoshi Funaki was the big star of the season. Competing before his fellow countrymen at Nagano, Funaki clinched the gold medal in the team competition and also won the large hill (120 meter) and a normal hill (90 meter) silver medal.
Slovenia's Primoz Peterka took the World Cup crown with Funaki finishing second.
Bjarte Engen Vik of Norway dominated the Nordic combined, winning two gold at Nagano and then clinching the World Cup title before his home fans at Holmenkollen outside Oslo, the cradle of Nordic skiing.
Copyright 2003 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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