In And Out Of A Jam

Beattie shot back: "That Zimmerebner, isn't he beautiful?" Well, as a matter of fact, at the conclusion of the Olympics nothing was very beautiful inside Austrian skiing. And if Zimmerebner could have heard the departing words of his own racers, he would surely have experienced the surprise that Beattie and his American youngsters had been unable to give him.

"We don't have a real coach like Beattie or Honor� Bonnet," said Gerhard Nenning. "Ernst Oberaigner is incapable. He is a director and not a coach. He never trains with us. We are left to ourselves. The ski manufacturers like K�stle and Kneissl do something. They send us to a summer training camp in the glaciers every year. We will have a new coach next spring. I think it will be Pepi Stiegler, who would be perfect."

Egon Zimmermann agreed that Stiegler should be the new Austrian coach. He said, "The fact that Stiegler nearly didn't make the slalom team and I didn't make it shows you clearly that there is something wrong in our management. I believe that we have the best skiers and the Americans and French have the best coaches. I don't think the Americans will have caught up with us by 1966, but in 1968 they could be strong. It all depends on whether they can find more young talents like Heuga and Kidd."

It may also depend on the willingness of the U.S. Ski Association and those who give money to support it to adopt the measures that Bob Beattie feels will greatly strengthen America's skiing effort. Some of them are: expand and refine permanent training camps at Aspen, Colo., Stowe, Vt. and Crystal Mountain, Wash.; organize American races more properly with sensible scheduling that takes advantage of high school and college vacations; hire retiring champions like Buddy Werner, Chuck Ferries and Gordy Eaton to work with young racers; promote clinics that include training films and are available to the smallest groups; obtain professional help in raising funds instead of placing so heavy a burden on hard-working volunteers; bring the best racers from Europe to America for serious competition ("they want to come"); build up skiing programs in colleges where those programs are lagging; put 40 boys on a national team and "train the devil" out of them; improve the downhill runs in America, making them more rugged, and prepare more of them; and, finally, create within the U.S. Ski Association a special office for a strong-willed man to "carry the ball" and see that these elaborate plans are undertaken.

Might that man be Bob Beattie?

"I don't know if I'm allowed back in the country. Anyhow, it's always a big secret what the Ski Association wants to do. But," Beattie said with an unsecret smile of satisfaction, "there were a few of us who enjoyed seeing those two boys get their medals more than anything we've ever done."