Downhill: Snow Way

A last-minute snowstorm swept across the Happo’one course Sunday morning, postponing the Olympic men’s downhill and the seemingly inevitable coronation of a new snow king.

Austrian Hermann Maier’s quest to join Toni Sailer and Jean-Claude Killy as the only Alpine skiers to win three gold medals in the same Olympics was put on hold--officials will try to run the downhill Monday--but Maier has grown accustomed to waiting for his precious moments in the snow.

It might sound inconceivable that a talent such as Maier would have slipped through the Austrian cracks, given that Alpine skiing is an obsession in the country and that national ski scouts mine talent the way the ‘49ers scoured for gold.

Yet Maier, at 25, is a relative Ludwig-come-lately to the Austrian scene, a former bricklayer who labored for years in obscurity as he plotted his course to the top.

Austrian coaches would have you believe that they had Maier under a watchful eye all along, charting his progress from afar.

Maier tells a different story:

“The Austrian team didn’t know me, that was the problem,” he said. “They never saw me.”

The world knows him now.

In his first full season on the World Cup circuit, Maier has made schnitzel-meat of the competition, winning 10 of the 30 races he has entered. Maier has 17 top-three finishes in his last 21 races.

Maier won another race, a giant slalom at Val D’Isere, France, in December, but was disqualified for removing his skis too early in the finish area.

The pressure on Maier to win at these Olympics is self-evident, given that Austrian officials a few weeks ago held Maier out of the famed Hahnenkamm downhill in Kitzbuehel--the Super Bowl of Austrian races--to prepare him for Nagano.

Maier might win four gold medals in Nagano--downhill, super-G, giant slalom and combined (the combined times of a separate downhill and slalom).

And while Maier is not known as a gate specialist, he finished 10th in the only World Cup slalom he entered this season. “He is raising the level of skiing to another level I think,” American downhiller Tommy Moe said.

So why did Maier have to scrap and claw to get Austria’s attention? Why would a man who might turn out to be the best skier in a generation have to win a triple-A Europa Cup title to win a spot on the national team?

Why wasn’t Hermann Maier--international ski-man of mystery--a star of the 1992 Albertville Games?

Maier, in fact, is fiercely proud that he made it here on his own, that he is not a product of the Austrian assembly line, and that his experience as a ski instructor on muddy-rutted, hard-packed runs has made him a great racer in all conditions.

Victory also tends to be sweeter when one has been summarily dismissed.

At 15, Maier was accepted to the national ski academy in Schladming, but lasted only a year. Maier weighed only 110 pounds at the time and had bad knees.

He returned home to Flachau and became a bricklayer, still dreaming of one day making the fabled Austrian team.

“I was not unhappy,” he said this week, “but I tried everything to come back, and now I am here.”

Maier’s vocation allowed him time to pursue his skiing.

“I liked that job,” he said. “I had time in the winter to ski, and in the summer I was a bricklayer, building houses. It was a good combination.”

Years of hauling bricks strengthened Maier’s body, and he never quit racing--demolishing the competition for years in regional races.

In 1995, already 22, Maier was allowed to enter the Austrian championships and finished a remarkable 18th from the 141st start position.

That bought Maier a ticket to become a forerunner for a World Cup giant slalom in Flachau. Forerunners are designated racers who precede the actual racers and relay reports on course conditions.

It turned out that Maier, had he been in the actual race, would have posted the seventh fastest time on the first run and the 11th fastest on the second.

Now that interested the Austrian coaches.

After his impressive showing in Flachau, Maier quit the brick business and became a full-fledged member of the elite Austrian team.

Well, not quite full-fledged.

In Maier’s first World Cup race, at Lillehammer in 1996, he did not have an official Austrian race outfit, so he raced in a uniform he bought second-hand from an American snowboarder.

When Tommy Moe won the 1994 Olympic downhill in Lillehammer, Hermann Maier was a ski instructor in Flachau.

Today, as he waits for the snow to clear, he stands on the precipice of trans-global stardom.

“It’s fine, it’s good for me,” he said of the attention. “I don’t like to have waited so long. It’s wonderful now, it’s the right moment, the Olympics.

Maier’s reign on the World Cup this year has been received with unabashed awe. Teammates and competitors marvel at the dangerous and daring lines he takes in speed races, and his ability to carve turns in slalom disciplines.

“The secret is in his head,” Austrian Hans Knaus said of Maier. “He can go 110%.”

Maier is already a cinch to become the first Austrian to win the World Cup overall title since Karl Schranz in 1970.

And while that feat in European quarters is considered to be as great an achievement--greater perhaps--than winning an Olympic gold medal, the Austrians appear now to understand that medals are critical when you’re trying to peddle your reputation worldwide.

The Austrian men are still seething after returning from the 1994 Games with only two medals, a gold and a bronze.

They have returned to Nagano hell-bent on destruction, with a weapon known as the Hermannator.

“I’m the favorite to win the World Cup overall,” Maier said. “It seems not so long now. I’m happy. But now is the time to look for medals. I hope I can bring one medal home for me.”

The only thing holding Maier back so far is the weather.