Word: skying
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Brundage might barely have tolerated Phil Mahre, 26, who probably makes no more than a six-figure living, legally laundered through the U.S. ski team. Neither money nor celebrity inordinately concerns him. As for gold medals, he says, "I don't know. It's every ski racer's goal. It would be exciting to win one. But I can live without it. To me, walking in the opening ceremonies is the essence of the Olympics. Winning the gold or making a lot of money is not the reason I am in the sport...
...always skied for no other reason than "the fun of it." His father was encouraging but not insistent. Dave Mahre sadly quit apple growing 22 years ago and took a job managing a ski area in order to support his burgeoning family, which numbers nine children. The Mahre kids were customarily dressed from the lost-and-found at the White Pass lodge, but the scenery was rich. Although school was an hour and a half away, the ski lift was just outside the door. "We finished our homework on the bus," Phil says, "and were off skiing and hiking...
Sired by a Hall of Fame steeplechase jockey, McKinney was raised on a horse farm but bred to be a ski racer by her stage mother Frances, who rented a winter house near Squaw Valley, Calif. "I remember wearing baby skis," says Tamara, the youngest and the second most promising of Frances McKinney's seven children, five of whom reached the U.S. ski team. Sheila, 25, the family's particular star, made the team at the unlikely age of twelve. But in 1977 she fell in a downhill run and was unconscious for a month. After relearning...
Nelson still hopes to be ready hi two weeks. "You have to be healthy and lucky," says Phil Mahre, who is near the end. "This is my last year. I'll still be connected with skiing, but I'd like to venture out and try something else." He expects to miss the excitement at the starting gate, the camaraderie hi the finish area and "even getting up at 6 o'clock in the morning." McKinney says, "It can't come together and it can't be good unless you're having a good time...
...players, another breed of home-grown Olympians will drive themselves beyond reason in strange and dangerous events without so much as a pat on the back or, for most, even a faint hope of gold, silver or bronze medals. U.S. athletes in the "minor" winter sports of biathlon, Nordic skiing, bobsled, luge and ski jumping have won only one silver and one bronze since 1956. But despite archaic equipment, meager training and, in most cases, pitifully small funding, they persist against the lavishly bestowed resources of Scandinavia, East Germany and the U.S.S.R. And this year, while perhaps only four have...