Word: super-g
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Last year, for the second time, Zurbriggen won skiing's overall World Cup, the measure of season-long excellence in the 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...
...took five World Cup downhills. The race is a mad descent of at least 800 meters, with few control gates, at speeds that can reach 80 or 85 m.p.h. The giant slalom, or GS, bridges downhill and slalom extremes in a beautiful, treacherous dance of large-radius turns. The super-G has not quite taken on its own character; it is either a slow, curvy downhill or a fast, stretched-out GS. Zurbriggen, going through high-speed gates in GS or super-G, is unmistakable: a big, rangy cat springing from turn to turn, from coiled crouch to full-body...
...Calgary the combined and the super-G have been added for the first time to the downhill, slalom and GS. Will Zurbriggen sweep five golds? No. That is so much more unlikely than when Killy, in '68, or Toni Sailer, in '56, swept all three events that it does not bear talking about. Tomba, a big, laughing fellow whose name is a drumbeat as his countrymen cheer him on, should take the slalom...
Pirmin, after his two World Cup downhill wins, looks good in the downhill, with Teammate Muller or Canada's Boyd as second choice. That leaves the GS, super-G and combined. Give Pirmin one gold and a silver and Girardelli, if he recovers from a bruising fall in late January, at least one medal. Give them all fat endorsements, glossy cars and TV contracts. Give the Larchenhof a try in 30 years; the tall fellow with the leather knickers, the pipe and the pointy nose, they say, still skis fairly well...
...many a small airline that once did well. For years, Thai Airways flew two DC-48 along a neat little system spreading out from Bangkok to Tokyo and Calcutta; then after crashes in 1953, the line tried to break into the big time by ordering three big Lockheed Super-G Constellations. In service last year, the planes promptly started losing $350,000 a month for Thai. Now the planes are grounded because the airline does not have enough money to operate them. Philippine Air Lines almost came a cropper by pushing too hard on international flights to the U.S., Japan...