As Olympics Approach, It Appears to Be All Uphill for U.S. Skiers

Eleven months before the 15th Winter Olympics open here, the U.S. men’s ski team is so deeply in distress even team officials are talking gloom and doom.

“You have to be honest,” said men’s downhill and super-giant slalom coach Theo Nadig. “It’s not looking good” for a medal from the U.S. men.

“You don’t make a skier from nothing in one year.”

“We’re like a ship lost at sea,” said Sandy Calligore, Nadig’s press spokesman. “We’re floundering.”

Skiers are used to plunges, but not like this. Just three years ago Bill Johnson stormed to a gold medal in downhill at Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, and the Mahre twins, Phil and Steve, won the gold and silver in slalom as the U.S. team took five Olympic medals.

But the Mahres since have retired and Johnson, who never again showed his Olympic form, is recuperating from double surgery this winter -- knee reconstruction and a major back operation. He can’t even get on skis until August.

For Johnson, never a stalwart at training, to recapture Olympic form in time for the Games, “He’d have to change 100 percent and work very hard,” said Nadig.

“I have serious doubts he’ll get the self-discipline to do that.”

That leaves men’s medal hopes in the hands of folks such as Doug Lewis and Mike Brown, Felix McGrath and Bob Ormsby, not exactly names that strike fear in the hearts of downhill racers.

Nadig and Calligore, here for the weekend World Cup races at Mount Allan, the Olympic venue 45 miles from Calgary, told sad tales of the decline of the men’s program. And the results on the race course bore them out.

In Saturday’s downhill, won easily by Swiss veteran Peter Mueller, the top U.S. finisher was Lewis in 20th place. Teammate Bill Hudson was 23rd.

In Sunday’s super-giant slalom, won by Marc Girardelli of Luxembourg with Swiss superstar Pirmin Zurbriggen close behind, Lewis was the top American at 24th and Jeff Olson was 29th.

The fortunes of the U.S. team have fallen so sharply that Calligore said sponsorships from major equipment manufacturers are in jeopardy.

Mark Archer, for example, who supplies Scott poles and goggles to top international skiers, said, “We’re pulling money out of the U.S. and putting it into the Europeans. We’re cutting back (on support for the U.S. team) and a lot of other companies are doing the same.

“We’re pushing an image. We need performance, results.”

“We’ve fallen way behind,” said former U.S. coach Bob Beattie, a member of a new committee formed to advise the team on ways to develop young talent, seen as one of the principal failings of the current regime.

“The problem is,” said Beattie, an ABC television commentator, “no one in the U.S. pays attention to skiing until the Olympics. And here we are.”

“This has been an introspective year for us,” said Brown, who finished 35th in the World Cup downhill season standings after Saturday’s final event.

“We asked ourselves,” Brown said, “ ‘What did we do wrong?’ ” compared to the Swiss, who behind Zurbriggen took the top three World Cup downhill spots.

The answer, said Brown, a softspoken Coloradan, lies largely in the level of commitment. The Swiss, he said, simply trained harder, longer and with greater attention to detail than the Americans or anyone else.

And with a cadre of a half-dozen top-level skiers, he said, the Swiss push each other to new levels of competitiveness in training.

“The axiom in skiing is you ski as well as your competition,” Brown said. “When we had the Mahres, that was the best. Then, when Bill (Johnson) and Doug (Lewis) skied well, that showed the rest of us we could do it.

“Right now, it’s life after the Mahres,” Brown said, “and unfortunately, we’re not winning.”

Nadig, a blond-bearded Swiss who coached Zurbriggen and his high-flying teammates before coming over to the U.S. team five years ago, said organizational problems plague the U.S. squad. In five years, he’s worked for four executive directors and two alpine directors; he watched his budget shrink by $700,000 after the 1984 Olympic success.

Only now is the budget coming back up, he said, in preparation for the Olympics. “But it’s already too late.”

The coach blames Johnson for a bad influence on the team, as well.

Even when healthy, said Nadig, the top American “is not a pacesetter. He’s not a good example. In a team, he’s so disruptive. ... “

Johnson left the team in a dispute two years ago and only rejoined with a promise from alpine director Harald Schoenhaar that he could train as he liked.

“He cut his own deal,” said Nadig, leaving the coach in a position of trying to teach young athletes self-discipline while “on the other side is this guy who does what he wants.

“Without the Mahres around to balance it, it was very difficult,” Nadig said.

Lewis, who finished the season 19th in the World Cup downhill standings, said working with Johnson is hopeless. “He’s not a team member. At the (‘84) Olympics, he told me the day before the race, ‘You don’t belong here; you’re not good enough.’

“With him not involved now,” said Lewis, “that’s fine with me.”

According to Nadig, things are just about as bleak on the men’s slalom and giant slalom teams, and the only bright spot in America’s ski prospects is the women’s division, in which Tamara McKinney won two World Cup slaloms and was second twice this season.

But Christin Cooper, silver medalist in giant slalom in 1984, has retired and Debbie Armstrong, who won the gold at Sarajevo, “never was on the podium before the Olympics and hasn’t been on since,” Calligore said.

Which leaves little hope for the run for gold in Calgary next year. Where the U.S. team won five medals last time, Zurbriggen alone is being touted as a possible winner of five for the Swiss.

“You get back what you invest,” said Nadig. “On a very good day, with a very good training program, with very good equipment and a little luck, there’s a chance Lewis or Brown could do something.

“But realistically,” he said with a shrug, “it’s not looking good.”