Word: phil
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Phil Mahre has a chance to become the world's best skier...
...handsome young man from White Pass, Wash., is obviously having a marvelous time. He skis, as one leading foreign coach puts it, "for sheer joy, unlike the Europeans, who often are driven by political, nationalistic or commercial pressures." At the age of 20, with his best years just ahead, Phil Mahre (pronounced mare) is already the finest American male skier in history, a solid gold-medal prospect for the 1980 Winter Olympic Games in Lake Placid, N.Y. As the World Cup competition ends this week in Arosa, Switzerland, Mahre is second only to Sweden's Ingemar Stenmark...
...competition, ski racing's big league, is a 22-event road show that stretches from Stratton, Vt., to Vald'Isère, France; a traveling extravaganza complete with glamour and groupies, danger and drama. The life-style is a world away from what goes on back in Phil Mahre's home town of White Pass, nestled in the Cascade Mountains. Its total population is 27, and nine belong to the Mahre household, including Steve, Phil's twin, who is himself a promising member of the U.S. ski team...
What White Pass lacks in glitter it makes up in snow-the hamlet was created by a ski club-and Phil and Steve began skimming down the slopes at the age of seven. As they developed, they became their own best coaches. Then, at 16, Phil suffered a setback when a freak avalanche buried him to the waist and broke his right leg. One year later he fractured the leg a second time while clowning around on a children's slide. Within 18 months, however, Mahre had recovered sufficiently to place a respectable fifth in the giant slalom...
...have always skied for my own enjoyment, and that's the way it is today," insists Phil. Perhaps, but with the Olympics coming up, Phil will forgo his summer respite this year and submit to off-season training in South America and Europe. "I'm really hungry now," he confesses...