Word: proell
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...choice of wax for polyethylene ski bottoms before each run is a state secret. Innsbruck may produce top speeds of nearly 85 m.p.h. Says Austrian Champion Franz Klammer, 22: "You know what a car looks like if it hits a wall at that speed." Adds former World Champion Annemarie Proell-Moser: "If angst grips you, stay off the course...
...full flight down an Alp's snowy flank, Austria's Annemarie Proell resembles nothing so much as a controlled crash about to happen. Feet well apart, arms locked to her thighs, in an awkward-looking squat that offends purists, she rockets out of the starting gate toward the first turn. Her motives for that all-out start are direct: "I try to risk as much as possible in the first few gates," she says. "It makes the competition nervous-I know they watch...
...only made the competition nervous, but she has nearly demolished it. Her friends call her style "brutal." She stays in her patented crouch through her entire run. More prudent racers straighten up from time to time-at the cost of a fraction of a second-as emergencies dictate. Proell disdains such caution and her total abandon has already won her two World Cups. She is assured of a third before the spring thaw. This season she won all eight women's downhill races, becoming the world's first skier-male or female-to score a sweep...
...Proell burst on the Alpine scene in 1969: a skinny, blonde 15-year-old with freckles, who was the youngest member of Austria's eight-girl national skiing team. Two years later, after packing another 40 pounds on her 5 ft. 6 in. frame (she now weighs a chunky 150), she won her first World...
...skiing, but the mood lasted only a short time. Then she threw herself into her harsh training regime, modeled after that of a prizefighter-long-distance runs, shadow boxing and rope jumping-and had a metal plaque made for the dashboard of her car: NEVER FORGET SAPPORO. Said Proell to a friend: "When I'm second...