Austrian Ski Fans Find a New Downhill Hero in Peter Wirnsberger

After four straight World Cup victories, Peter Wirnsberger of Austria is being hailed as the heir-apparent to Franz Klammer, the greatest downhill ski racer of all time.

Ski-crazy Austria has been starved for heroes in recent years and has had to accept victory after victory by its arch-rival Switzerland. Even Helmut Hoeflehner’s three World Cup wins last season, which helped him to the Cup downhill title, paled in comparison with Austrian failures at the 1984 Winter Olympics and 1985 World Alpine Ski Championships.

Wirnsberger’s success has changed that. But he is not sure he can fill the spot left vacant last spring by the retirement of Klammer--”The Kaiser,” who won more downhills than anyone else and was the most charismatic figure on the ski circuit for more than a decade.

“You can’t compare me with Klammer,” said Wirnsberger, who has doubled his tally of downhill victories in the space of a month.

“It is now impossible to win so many races in a row as Klammer did. Anyway, I’m Peter Wirnsberger, and no one else.”

Wirnsberger, 27, from Vordernberg, north of Graz, exploded to the top of the men’s overall and downhill World Cup standings with successive triumphs at Val Gardena, Italy; Schladming, Austria, and a Kitzbuehel double.

Wirnsberger is still dazzled by his new fame.

“In previous years, I didn’t know why I was losing,” he said after the two Kitzbuehel wins raised him to national hero status. “Now, I certainly don’t understand why I’m suddenly winning.”

Despite his success, Wirnsberger is still a long way from the standard set by Klammer, who won six races in a row in the 1974-75 season and nine in a row, over two seasons, in 1976 and 1977. Klammer’s record of 25 downhill wins in 13 years of World Cup competition is a long way from being challenged.

Nevertheless, the Wirnsberger boom is being hailed by the Austrian press, desperate to upstage neighboring Switzerland.

The weekly news magazine Profil, which seldom carries sport, ran a three-page color spread on Wirnsberger, 24 hours after his second victory in two days on one of the World Cup’s toughest mountains.

Ski success has re-emerged as the hottest topic in Austria.

“What kind of news do these Austrians think they’re they’re presenting?” complained one veteran Vienna-based correspondent. “All you hear or see now is skiing, skiing, skiing. You’d think nothing else happens in the world.”

Austrians have had high hopes for Wirnsberger since 1977, but he didn’t gain his first World Cup victory for another two years, finally winning at Garmisch-Partenkirchen, West Germany, in 1979. He won two other Cup races that year, took the Olympic silver medal at Lake Placid in 1980, but then failed to win again until last year.

Austrian hopes for their once-proud men’s team scraped bottom when they took only one medal in both the 1984 Olympics at Sarajevo and last year’s World ski Championships. Both medals were bronze--and both in the slalom, a disaster for a nation where only the glamorous downhill specialty counts.

Wirnsberger was sixth at the 1985 World Championships in Bormio, Italy, shortly after winning a World Cup race at Wengen, Switzerland. But this season, his results in downhill, a specialty which can easily deal out serious injury with the slightest slip of a ski edge, have been on the rise.

He started the World Cup year by placing seventh and fourth in two races at Las Lenas, Argentina in August, then picked up the pace in the European winter with a third at Val d’Isere, France, a week before notching the Val Gardena victory that touched off his current string.