Word: schranz
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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When Skier Karl Schranz returned to Austria last week from Japan, where he had been barred from competition in the Winter Olympics, he got a hero's welcome from 100,000 Viennese -more than had turned out to see either John F. Kennedy or Queen Elizabeth II. The singing, cheering crowds demonstrated a sound instinct for commercial values. A disproportionate share of Austria's money and jobs comes from the skimaking industry, with a mighty boost from the prestige of ski champions like Schranz...
Searching the Slopes. All four firms have learned to sell glamour as well as craftsmanship. Kneissl, for which Schranz has worked since he was a teenager, claims that its skis have helped capture 16 Olympic medals. It urges its salesmen to "mention our victories in your sales talks." Like its competitors, Kneissl regularly sends out talent scouts to search the mountainsides for promising 12-and 13-year-olds, whom it hires as apprentices, sends to secondary school and trains to be champion skiers...
Indeed it has. Today, Karl Schranz is said to make $60,000 a year from various promotional activities. As the roaring crowds that welcomed him last week illustrate, few of his countrymen mind. One possible reason is that Austria's skimakers will need all the help that they can get from the champions whom they sponsor in order to hold on to their market share against tightening foreign competition...
Unmoved. "It's absurd!" cried Austrian Ski Federation President Karl Heinz Klee. "Schranz is being sacrificed in a highly unethical manner." Sneered Vienna's Kronen Zeitung: "Amateurs of Brundage's Olympic imagination exist only in the childhood dreams of this bad old man." The old man was unmoved. Said Klee: "Under the circumstances, there is only one road open to us-the road home." After a night of consultations, however, the Austrians decided to compete, ostensibly at the urging of Schranz...
...from contrite, Schranz pointed out that "the Russians are subsidized by their government, and all international athletes get help from one source or another." While Brundage ignores the open professionalism of Russian and other competitors from Iron Curtain countries because he says he lacks "documentation," his case against Schranz was provoked in part by the skier's criticism of the I.O.C. for its "19th century attitudes" and for "favoring rich competitors over poor ones." Brundage in turn characterized Schranz as a "blatant and verbose offender" who is "disrespectful to the Olympic movement...