Rub-a-dub-dub, He Was Splashier In The Tub

The best downhill racer in American history reclined in his hot tub on his sun deck, his third or fourth bottle of Molson Golden in his hand, as the sweet autumn sun of Southern California warmed his smiling face. He was, as usual, situated high on a hill, this one a Malibu hill that fell in steep grassy rolls to the Pacific Ocean far below. William Dean Johnson, 24, tilted the bottle, swigged, swallowed and said, "What good is winning and getting to the top if you can't enjoy it? It's not how much money you have, it's what you do with it. I always wanted to live in Malibu, and when this place came up for sale, I jumped at it. I'm thinking of buying the three houses next to it, too. Am I a millionaire? Maybe not, but I'll be a millionaire soon. That's inevitable."

Ski racing seemed very far away indeed from Johnson's dream house, and he was asked if he ever worried about how well he would do in the coming season. "I don't have to live up to anything," he said. "I have already accomplished everything I wanted in ski racing. The rest for me is fun. I plan to bug the Austrians, drive them crazy for a while. If I lose every race from now on, well, I'll just take some acting lessons and go into the movies. For me, skiing is a means to an end."

That was in mid-November. Last week that selfsame downhill hero was at the top of another kind of slope, for the start of the classic Lauberhorn downhill in Wengen, Switzerland. Grim and tense, he was standing at the very same place where, roughly one year ago, he had flung himself into ski racing history. On Jan. 15,1984, Johnson had won the Lauberhorn, pulled it out on a soft, windy, truncated course, narrowly escaping a spectacular fall to finish on top—the first World Cup downhill victory ever achieved by an American man. Europeans scoffed and ridiculed that victory, but Johnson could do no wrong. He went on to win the Olympic gold medal at Sarajevo and two more 1984 World Cup downhills, on Colorado's Aspen and Canada's Whistler mountains. He became the most talked-about American ski racer ever; certainly he was the most talkative. Now he had returned to the scene of his initial crime: his theft of the Lauberhorn from angry Austrians and bitter Swiss, who had long considered the downhill their private possession.

Johnson flew to Europe on Nov. 18, shortly after his remarks from his hot tub, and found there was no snow to train on and, ultimately, no snow to race on, either. The entire December World Cup downhill schedule was in doubt. Glum and frustrated, downhillers had to wait until Dec. 15 before enough snow accumulated to let them race. On a tough, icy course in Val Gardena, Italy, Johnson finished a pathetic 23rd. He looked tired, weak, unable to hold a tuck. There was not another race until Jan. 11. That was the Hahnenkamm at Kitzbühel, Austria, a splendidly treacherous course, diamond-hard and fiercely fast—decidedly not Johnson's kind of conditions. Two races were held back-to-back in Kitzbühel to make up for those lost in December. In the first, Johnson finished 31st. He looked terrible, and later he said with typical candor, "My knees were shaking in the start." In the finish area one of his Austrian nemeses, Harti Weirather, the downhill world champion in 1982, turned to an American official as Johnson crossed the finish line and said, "He is a joke."

The second race at Kitzbühel was a different story. Suddenly strong and confident, Johnson was running seventh by the interval clock when he flashed into a sudden compression near the bottom of the course, rocked back on his skis, caught an edge, almost recovered, then missed a gate and was disqualified. Nevertheless, he was exultant. "I got it all back," he said. "My technique was working; my turns were right." Even the Austrian coach, Karl (Downhill Charlie) Kahr, said Johnson had run a fine race.

Then came Wengen. Again, two races were scheduled back-to-back. In the first, Johnson finished 10th, a nice, pleasant result, although he said his skis, never used before, were stiff and "tough to pull around the turns." The race was won by an Austrian, Helmut Höflehner, 25, with the superb Swiss, Franz Heinzer, second. It was Höflehner's second victory of the season. The Austrian and Swiss teams are staging a mass assault on the downhills this year: Of the top 10 in that first Wengen race, four were Swiss and four were Austrian. The second race at Wengen was roughly the same, with Johnson finishing seventh behind the winner, Austria's Peter Wirnsberger, and a cluster of Swiss.

So what has happened to America's downhill hero of 1984? Five races this season and not one victory to show for it. Has this phenomenon, who entered the limelight and lore of American sport with such swagger and panache, already lost his touch? Certainly not. As Downhill Charlie himself said, "Don't underestimate Bill Johnson. He gets stronger from race to race. For now, he shows the same symptoms other Olympic and world champions showed the year after they won. Except for Franz Klammer in 1976, all were worn down and less strong in the season following victory."

Theo Nadig, the even-tempered Swiss who coaches the U.S. downhill team, agreed. "Bill owed it to himself to get all the money he could after he won the gold medal," Nadig said. "He traveled all summer. Airplanes, hotels, moving constantly. That chews up your body. He was not in good shape, but he had no choice. The opportunity was there; he had to grab it. Frankly, I don't expect him to win any races this year. A few top-10 finishes is the best he should expect."

It is true that Johnson chewed himself up during the frenzied months of money grabbing that followed his golden winter of '84. "I was grinding out signatures on contracts like a machine," he says. "I negotiated all my own contracts. I don't have an agent because I don't want to give away 15 percent of what I get. I booked myself after the Olympics, and I got some of the best ski equipment contracts in the world."

He has been in a constant state of war with the U.S. Ski Team management, which would like to act as his agent, negotiator and all-around business manager. "I told them to take a hike," says Johnson. "They only sell the team, not the individual. They ruin racers by taking their money. The latest is, they're trying to get a piece of money from my movie." (That film, a made-for-television job about his rocket ride from car thief to gold medalist, has not yet gone into production, although it has been scripted and currently carries the faintly nauseating title Guts and Glory.)