A SLALOM TO SAVOR : Billy Kidd, Jimmie Heuga Gave U.S. Skiing a Boost in ’64

Billy Kidd’s first reaction was, “Oh no, I didn’t win the race.” Jimmie Heuga said he took his gloves off and threw them down on the snow in disgust.

The date was Feb. 8, 1964, the place Innsbruck, Austria. And moments after their initial disappointment subsided, both men realized that they had just made history, of a sort.

“Not only had we won the first Olympic medals in men’s Alpine skiing for the United States,” Kidd said here Wednesday--25 years to the day later--”but we had drawn the attention of the world and established the credibility of U.S. skiing.”

Kidd, with the fastest second run of the men’s slalom, took the silver medal in that final race of the ’64 Winter Games, and Heuga came out of the second-seeded group to earn the bronze. Pepi Stiegler of Austria won the gold medal.

“We didn’t win,” said Heuga, who now lives in the Vail Valley. “But we had done something that no other American male ski racers had ever done in the Olympics. It was a very special time, especially for the men, and it was definitely a team effort, with a common sense of sacrifice.”

On Wednesday, the two longtime friends went skiing again between races of the 1989 World Alpine Ski Championships. This time, Kidd beat Heuga down the slope again, but Jimmie has avalid excuse--not that he would use it.

Heuga, 44, has had multiple sclerosis since 1967, and fighting the disease has become the focal point of his life, along with skiing. He now heads the Jimmie Heuga Center, a nonprofit scientific research organization in Vail.

Kidd, 43, who is director of skiing at Steamboat Springs, Colo., has written three books on skiing and does commentary for CBS.

They each had success in racing after 1964: Kidd won the combined gold medal in the 1970 world championships at Val Gardena, Italy, and Heuga won the Arlberg Kandahar in 1967, when he also finished third in the World Cup giant slalom standings. But that Olympic slalom in ’64 was the big breakthrough.

“Up until Innsbruck,” Kidd said, “only our women skiers were being taken seriously, and we didn’t even go to Europe in the winter of 1962-63. We stayed home in North America, and some of the Europeans came over and took part in our races. We figured that this would help us get some points to boost our seedings when we did go over the next winter. But the European ski officials disagreed.

“Bob Beattie was the ski coach at the University of Colorado then, and he was named the first full-time U.S. Olympic Alpine coach. We arrived in France around Thanksgiving of ’63 and trained with the French team, which was then No. 1 in the world.

“But when we began racing, we had starting numbers down in the 40s, 50s and 60s,” Kidd said. “In those days, especially, it was impossible to win if you had so many racers chewing up the course ahead of you.”

Beattie, who is also at Vail as an ESPN commentator, argued with the International Skiing Federation (FIS) officials and, with the help of some impressive results by Kidd, Heuga, Buddy Werner and Chuck Ferries, finally got his racers better starting numbers.

Still, Kidd said, Americans were considered second-rate skiers.

“I remember that Christmas, two months before the Olympics,” Kidd said. “We didn’t have enough money to come home, so we stayed in Europe over the holidays. One afternoon, we had tea with the ski-school director at St. Anton, Austria, a crusty old fellow. He asked me politely how I thought I might do in the Olympics. I said that I hoped to win a medal, and he roared with laughter.

“Subconsciously, I guess, this just made me more determined.

“But then at Innsbruck, I drew No. 1 for the downhill, and I remember standing in the starting gate, 2 minutes away from a 60-m.p.h. run down a chute of sheer ice, with 50,000 people watching on the course, TV cameras trained on me and Nikons all over the place. My knees were barely holding me up, and I was having trouble breathing.

“It was a classic case of stage fright. I made a mistake about four gates into my run and wound up 16th. I was so angry with myself that I was determined never to have stage fright again.

“Ten days later, by the second run of the slalom, I was a different person. My parents were there, and they said people were screaming for me, because I had a chance to win the race, but I didn’t hear them. I was concentrating so completely that all I could hear was my (ski) edges on the ice, trying to find out if I was skidding or carving my turns.”

He was sixth after the first run but had the fastest second run and finished only 0.14 of a second behind Stiegler.

“I knew I at least had the bronze, if Jimmie, who was still to come down, got either the silver or gold,” he said.

Heuga was third after the first run, and Kidd said he had never seen a racer more relaxed in the starting gate.

“He was standing up there,” Kidd said, “and some girls along the course shouted out that they were from the University of Colorado, too, and Jimmie started carrying on a conversation with them, like he was just out enjoying an afternoon of skiing. But as soon as he started down the course, he shut everything else out and concentrated totally on the race.”

Said Heuga: “I knew I had a chance for a medal, but I felt kind of funny because I thought Buddy Werner deserved one more than me. When I came through the finish and knew that I had the bronze, the first person to rush over and embrace me was Werner. Buddy was just happy for the whole team.”

Werner, who was killed shortly thereafter in an avalanche, finished eighth, and Heuga said: “I had mixed emotions after the race. First, I was disappointed that I hadn’t skied fast enough for the gold; then I realized that the bronze wasn’t so bad, after all, and I was proud for the United States, and finally, I was uneasy because I felt that Buddy really should have gotten a medal instead of me.”

Heuga was 0.25 of a second behind Kidd, and both of their runs were called by Jim McKay of ABC, which was televising its first Winter Games.

“It was kind of a watershed,” Kidd said. “Those were the last Olympics for wooden skis and leather boots--we were using the new metal skis in downhill but not in the technical events. And interest in skiing really took off in the United States right after that.”

Kidd went on to win the world professional ski-racing championship in the spring of 1970, after his gold medal at Val Gardena. The next year, he lost the pro title to Spider Sabich, by 0.007 of a second, and since then has been affiliated with Steamboat, about 50 miles from here.

“The main thing I try to do,” Kidd said, “both in my racing camps and my free clinics that I give at noon each day when I’m there, is to tell skiers to watch the best racers in the world, on TV or in person. This will make anyone a better skier. Racers also want to get down the hill without falling, and you can learn from them, no matter how well you ski.”

In addition to his books, Kidd has produced a video, “Billy Kidd’s Ski Racing,” which he said, naturally, can benefit all skiers, not just racers.

Kidd was recently divorced, after a 12-year marriage, and has two sons, 11 and 9, and a daughter, 5.

Heuga, who married his first wife in Geneva shortly after the 1968 Winter Olympics at Grenoble, France, was divorced three years later, just a few months after he was diagnosed as having MS.

“I started having vision problems as early as the spring of 1967,” Heuga said, “and I was feeling some numbness in my legs, but it would come and go. I started seeing an ophthalmologist and other specialists, but it took them until September of ’70 to figure out that it was MS.”

Heuga, who grew up in Squaw Valley, Calif., spent the next decade or so as director of skiing at the Bear Valley resort in the Sierra, and working for a ski equipment company.

“Then,” he said, “I became kind of a hermit in Connecticut. And I spent the time forming my thoughts on how to live the rest of my life and developing my own fitness program.”

Soon, Heuga was giving his ideas to others, and he found himself speaking to more than 70 chapters of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.

His theme: “You don’t have to sit and wait fatalistically for a miracle cure to come along. You can take charge of your own life and live it to the fullest.”

Heuga, who has a problem with his balance, walks with the aid of a cane, swims almost daily, and skis as often as possible. “I’ve been on the hill 18 days so far this winter,” he said. “Last year, I skied 44 days.”

In 1984, with the help of a $10,000 grant from the Vail Valley Foundation, Heuga founded the Jimmie Heuga Center here. He soon raised another $60,000 from various charitable events and was on his way. The center’s 1989 budget is $900,000.

A total of 22 ski resorts in North America help by playing host to his Jimmie Heuga Express, in which three-skier teams raise money by skiing as many vertical feet as possible on a given weekend.

Heuga has also received financial aid or encouragement from Martin Davis, president and chief executive officer of Gulf-Western; Dr. Robert Slater of the National MS Society, and former President Gerald R. Ford and his wife, Betty.

“The Boston chapter of the MS Society helped publish my program in a book titled, ‘Maximizing Your Health,’ ” Heuga said. “Following the program may not affect one’s condition, but it can affect his or her health and help to make life more enjoyable.”

At his center, Heuga has a staff of 40 professionals. It offers 5-day seminars for groups of 25 each and has a 10-month waiting list. Heuga said: “We show those who are physically challenged, not just with MS but with other conditions, how they can deal with the uncertainty in their lives, uncertainty that can lead to self-doubt and then to a loss of self-esteem. We try to give them the motivation to regain control of their lives.”

Heuga seems to be dealing nicely with his own life. He married the former Debbie Dana two years ago, and they expect their first child July 21.

But he says he still hopes to beat Billy Kidd to the bottom of the hill some day.