After the Olympics, His Life Definitely Hasn’t Gone Downhill

Even if you are the famous and outrageous Bill Johnson, sometimes, as you stand at the top of a mountain, about to ski to the bottom at 80 m.p.h., you know fear.

“You look straight down at a sheet of ice,” Johnson says. “It’s wild. You’re just a man. You think, ‘What am I doing up here?’ ”

Then the fear section of the brain suddenly blinks off, the ski computer section flashes on, and Bill Johnson brings another mountain to its knees, sliding down the slab of ice at speeds equal to a nice major league fastball.

Just like he did 18 months ago at Sarajevo, where he won the downhill gold medal in the Winter Olympics, the first American male skier to ever win a gold.

The other day Bill Johnson stood at the top of another mountain, knowing exactly what he was doing up there. He was living out the American dream. With the endorsement loot from the gold medal, he bought himself a big cliffside house high in the mountains overlooking Malibu.

“It’s kind of extravagant,” he said casually, “but what the heck.”

He eased down into a patio chair on his sun deck and popped open a cold beer. It was 10 o’clock in the morning.

Beer for breakfast, eh? Just like your image.

“Breakfast?” Johnson said, laughing. “I’ve been up five hours already.”

A typical August day. Up at 5, run to the top of the mountain and back, jump in the backyard hot tub, trim the lawn, water the shrubs, fuss with the flower garden you’ve planted, do an interview, throw some stuff in a suitcase, jump in your Porsche and head to the airport for another big business/pleasure trip.

Life is pretty good right now, for which Bill Johnson is not about to apologize. He’s paid some dues. He started serious training for a gold medal at age 13, and part of his motivation was money.

“I wasn’t coming from a rich family,” he said. “I wanted to be rich some day, so I’d never have that worry. That (money problems) kind of broke up our family. We were cooking, but things went sour (financially), and that kind of broke up the family. I decided I wanted to be rich so that would never happen to me if I ever had a family.”

He doesn’t have one yet. Johnson is resolutely single, but he isn’t living quietly, saving all his money for the future. That wouldn’t be him. If Bill was a flower, he would not be a shrinking violet. This is the former teen-age car thief, remember, and the cocky kid who was branded a “nasenbohrer”-- nosepicker--by Franz Klammer last year, and who bragged about winning the gold medal before he won it.

“That wasn’t cockiness or brashness,” Johnson said of his Olympic prediction. “It was just knowing my competition and knowing I was skiing above everyone else’s abilities at that time. I realized I had perfected a gliding technique that couldn’t be beat.

“When you’ve got that much of an advantage. . . . (Shrug). That was my main reason for telling everyone I was going to win. And I knew that predicting it would give me more credibility and marketing recognition with the public, help me attain my ultimate goal--to be rich and famous. Or richly famous.”

If you’re burned out on big-time athletes who seem bored or aggravated by their fame and fortune, you’ve got to love Bill Johnson. He’s going to ride this hill for all it’s worth.

“I like that distinction (of being rich and famous),” he said. “It’s a lot of fun. You get to meet a lot of people. I’m going to meet Bob Hope this month at a golf tournament. I’m looking forward to it. I’ve been known to get off a few pretty good lines, myself.”

Johnson moved about his house, packing. Took a suitcase to the garage and loaded it into his new, surgically clean Porsche 911 Carrera. He’ll pick up a new Audi in Europe.

Does he always keep the Porsche this clean?

“Always.”

He’s had the car a few months, but it has no license plates.

“I just haven’t had time to go to Oregon to get ‘em,” he said.

I guess Oregon is where you go to get license plates for Porsches. Johnson pointed out a sign in the car’s side window--”Protected by .357 Magnum.”

The car is real handy for negotiating the winding road down to the coast.

“I’ve had it sideways a of couple times,” he said, casually.

Back in his living room, Johnson fed a cassette into his VCR. He played some of his great downhill runs, including the dramatic Sarajevo bomb run. He seemed to enjoy the show.

He left the room and came back with a small case, opened it and showed me his gold medal. You can get a goose bump or two holding a huge hunk of gold that represents a landmark Olympic triumph, an ultimate victory in the most dangerous Olympic event.

“I never take it out to look at it,” Johnson said. “It’s more for everybody else.”

What about his future in skiing?

“I could’ve hung up the boards after winning the gold medal,” Johnson said, “but I was just starting to have some fun. Maybe I had too much fun last summer. But I was kind of lost. I had my Olympic medal, two World Cups, what else was there for me to win?

“I’d say I got a little out of shape. But I was more out of shape mentally than physically. Halfway through the world championship season, I just wanted to get it over with.”

But he decided not to quit. He recently went back into training, rejoined the U.S. ski team that he quit last May in a dispute over money. He knows that the cash flow can dry up if he doesn’t keep skiing, and winning. He has decided he wants another gold medal in ‘88, and all the goodies that go along with it. He wants to thumb his nasen at the Austrians one more sweet time. He is fired up.

Johnson tossed another bag into the Porsche and excused himself. He had to get down a mountain.