Word: innsbruck
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Stenmark only rarely competes in the downhill; its headlong plunge does not appeal to his sense of precision. He is strictly a specialist in the slalom and the giant slalom, fascinated by their intricate swoops and switchbacks. At Innsbruck four years ago, Stenmark fell in the slalom and had to content himself with a bronze in the giant slalom. He came to Lake Placid determined to take the big prize that had escaped him, a gold medal...
...second run and snared the gold by half a second. Still, Mahre's silver made him only the third American man ever to win an Olympic alpine skiing medal of any kind. (Billy Kidd took a silver and Jimmy Heuga a bronze in the slalom at Innsbruck in 1964, the only other medalists.) Mahre went over and congratulated Stenmark, and then the two super skiers, who used to train together, sat side by side in the sun like old friends and watched the rest of the competition...
...prove. Like Stenmark, she held the record for World Cup career victories (61 for her, 46 for him) and, like Stenmark, she had never won an Olympic gold medal. At Sapporo in 1972, when she was 18, she had been forced to settle for two silvers, and she missed Innsbruck in 1976 because she was at home in Kleinarl, Austria, nursing her father, a Tyrolean farmer, in his terminal illness. She came to Lake Placid, at age 26, knowing it was her last chance for gold...
...Austrian ski team was considerably grimmer than the Americans, and for a good but unusual reason: it had too much talent. In fact, so strong were the Austrians that Franz Klammer did not even make the team. In 1976, Klammer's run in Innsbruck had instantly become a classic of sport-a headlong, fanatical plunge of almost mystical recklessness and desire. But the following year, Klammer's younger brother Klaus, also a racer, fell so badly that he will probably be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. After that, some critical edge of aggressiveness...
...chopped into the ice and his strokes sent up rooster tails of shavings. There was no such trail of glittering ice in Kulikov's wake. Heiden pulled away to win and establish a new Olympic record of 38:03 sec., 1.14 sec. faster than the mark achieved in Innsbruck by Kulikov. The Soviet, who finished in 38.37, had to settle for the silver. Heiden said later that he felt almost as though he had been fired out of a slingshot when he came through the final turn. It was one of the great moments of the Olympics' first...