Word: pirmin
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...Alpine skiing blasts off with the sheer fun and sheer craziness of the downhill. The mighty Swiss, led by Pirmin Zurbriggen, are the ones to watch for. -- Ski Jumper Matti Nykanen, Finland's bad boy, takes off for the first of two hoped-for golds. -- U.S. speed skaters came up empty-handed at Sarajevo, but at this distance Americans Nick Thometz and Dan Jansen are both good bets...
...bear, burly Daniel Mahrer, has won two downhills so far this season. No U.S. skier will place in the downhill without supernatural intervention, but any one of several Austrians could reverse that team's unaccountable recent blahs and win out of sheer embarrassment. And then, of course, there is Pirmin Zurbriggen, 25, the people's choice from Zurich to Zug, from Zell to Saas-Almagell, his tiny hometown in the Swiss canton of Valais...
...only in the matter of cherished stereotype that this serious-minded innkeeper's son comes up lacking. In public fancy, ski racers, and especially downhillers, are barbarians, berserkers, wearers of iron hats with cow horns sticking out of them. Pirmin, from a minor resort town near Saas-Fee (which is a minor resort near Zermatt), is the sort of nice young man your mother wants your sister to meet. He does not look as if he eats nails. He has curly, reddish-blond hair, an elf's pointy nose and a shy, boyish grin, behind which is real shyness, behind...
...inside. His ties are very strong to his parents and the small 30-bed sport hotel, called the Larchenhof, that his father Alois built and now runs. A ski racer himself, Alois quit when a younger brother died after a ski fall, but it was he who first encouraged Pirmin to race. Pirmin's girlfriend Moni Julen, a pretty, dark-haired ski instructor from Zermatt, is a cousin of his friend Max and is accepted as part of this tight, protective mountain clan, which includes Heidi, 20, his younger sister and a downhiller on the national team. As a teenager...
Alpine Skiing: Johnson, although injured, will lead the American men's team, along with Gale "Tiger" Shaw and Felix McGrath. But the foreign competition, led by Switzerland's Pirmin Zurbriggen, may be too tough for the Americans...