Word: skiers
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...beautifully they can go. We so seldom drop by their world, and yet are made welcome. The opening ceremonies will feature Jamaican bobsledders still thrilling at the recent sighting of their first snow. "I am all alone with the mountain," Jean-Claude Killy used to murmur, but the golden skier of Grenoble was also known to drop his pants in midair and park his Volkswagen in the hotel lobby. This is serious stuff, but it promises...
...count your money just yet. Big, cheerful Michael Mair of Italy, who won at Leukerbad last month, could get his bear-shaped 220 lbs. behind a thundering run. A slightly smaller Swiss 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...
...Alpine disciplines (slalom; giant slalom; super-G, for super giant slalom; and downhill). He dominated the world championship at Crans-Montana with two gold medals and two silvers. He leads the current World Cup, and this Olympic year could establish him as the best all-event male Alpine skier since Jean-Claude Killy. Not the best male Alpine skier, without qualification, over this period; that would be Sweden's astonishing Ingemar Stenmark, still campaigning at 31, a self-invented slalom and giant slalom wizard who has won more World Cup races (85) than any other man. But Stenmark does...
...cable cars, log lobby time and wait out bad weather with the same few dozen people. In such a one-ring circus, Zurbriggen has had only one close friend, the Swiss GS star Max Julen, who retired last year. Asked if he is friendly with any of the other skiers, he mentions the West German ace Markus Wasmeier, like himself a generalist who is a threat in any event. Wasmeier, a likable fellow with lank blond hair and a lean, fined-down body, is obviously startled to hear this; he thinks Zurbriggen is a magnificent skier, he says...
...would rather see a foreign skier win," Maria Walliser has said, "than be second to anyone on the Swiss team." In the snug little world of winter sports, everyone knows who "anyone" refers to: her teammate Michela Figini. Walliser, 24, was the World Cup overall champion in 1986 and 1987, and Figini, 21, was champion in 1985 and the world's top-rated downhill skier last year. They are the more than first-rate, and less than friendly, stars of a powerful female Swiss team...