Super-G Force

Daron Rahlves is a reigning world champion in Alpine skiing, but it might as well be tiddlywinks for all the world knows.

U.S. skiers, of course, long ago realized that home folks really care what they do only in televised bursts during Olympic years.

The 9-to-5 part of it is for pride and scrapbooks.

To wit: Rahlves’ triumph last March on the super-giant slalom slope at St. Anton, a race in which he iced the Austrians on their home snow, was an industry win--an inside job.

It established the American as a superstar on the World Cup circuit but did little to improve his lot outside arctic circles.

Safe to say, if Rahlves were Austrian, he’d be a haus-hold name in Salzburg.

Back home?

Rahlves returned to a smattering of applause. Friends tossed a party in his hometown, Truckee, Calif., popped a few champagne corks.

Last summer, a stranger recognized Rahlves while he was dining at a waterside restaurant in Rhode Island. Nice, but a far cry from checking into hotels under assumed names.

Money? Fame?

Rahlves thought defeating the sport’s two best skiers, Austria’s Hermann Maier and Stephen Eberharter, ought to have been worth at least a set of keys from Chevrolet.

“You win a world championship and you still can’t get a damn truck from the ski team sponsor,” Rahlves cracks. “Or even a deal on it!”

Rahlves also knows this: The world is watching now.

It watched in 1976 when Franz Klammer on edges kept us on edge--with help from a breathless Bob Beattie--during that harrowing gold-medal run at Innsbruck, Austria.

It watched in 1984, when Bill Johnson stormed the downhill at Sarajevo. It tuned in when Alaskan Tommy Moe became Thor for a day in Norway.

We took a flier in 1998 when Maier took one off a jump at the downhill course Hakuba, Japan.

And now, bells toll for Rahlves.

All he has worked for ticks toward Feb. 10, the day he figures to be among the medal contenders in the Olympic downhill at Snowbasin.

Rahlves’ heart also will be racing toward the Olympic super-G on Feb. 16, yet it is that mythical mile of downhill that makes heroes of men.

“It’ll be the biggest race of my career, skiing at Salt Lake,” he says. “It’s going to be my biggest chance to show what I have to myself and the rest of the world.”

Pressure?

“Oh yeah, but it’s kind of cool too,” he says. “It shows who’s got what it takes. There’s so much at stake, a lot of people will break. There’s so much pressure, so much tension. If you come down and win the Olympics, your life for sure is going to change.”

Rahlves hasn’t won a World Cup race this season--he ranks 18th in downhill and 10th in super-G--yet the Europeans are well aware Americans have a history of pulling off Olympic upsets.

And although Rahlves won’t have much of a home-mountain advantage--bad weather has drastically limited ski time on the hill--the track favors his attacking style.

Yet, as Rahlves recently calculated his chances of victory, he admitted the Olympic downhill is lacking a key component: Hermann Maier.

The Austrian star would have been favored had a motorcycle accident last summer not knocked him out of the Salt Lake City Games.

And although Maier’s absence figures to improve Rahlves’ medal chances, he doesn’t see it that way.

“I’d much rather have him there,” he says. “There are a lot of other guys out there who are fast, but when people look at the sport, he’s been so dominant for so long, he’s sort of the icon of ski racing. There might be a little taken away from it. I don’t think it’s any less important. People say, ‘It’s a better chance for you now.’

“If that comes up I’ll say, ‘He was at the World Championships last year and I beat him there.’ Yeah, I’d rather have the best guy there, so that stuff doesn’t come up.”

The night before he won the world title in super-G, Rahlves received an e-mail from former U.S. racer AJ Kitt. The last words Kitt typed were, “Take it.”

Rahlves made the words his mantra. He has had precious few runs on the Olympic course, but television cameras did capture one of his training runs last spring before a World Cup downhill that was canceled because of too much snow.

Rahlves has gone loopy looking at the loop.

“I’ve closed my eyes and gone over it a lot of times,” he says. “I just try and mentally have it played out in my head already. I feel confident. I could get on that hill right now and feel comfortable.”

Rahlves, 28, likes to joke about how little winning the world title has changed him, though he is more comfortable out of the public glare.

“Look at Picabo [Street],” Rahlves says. “She’s so good with people and the media. She’s bubbly, energetic. I’m much more laid back. I don’t need the attention.”

For most of Rahlves’ nine years on the U.S. ski team, attention has not been a problem.

He always has been more of a quiet thrill-seeker, a lonesome lunatic when it comes to extracurricular escapades.

In fact, the biggest fear U.S. coaches have about him is that he will injure himself off the mountain.

Many professional athletes have clauses in their contracts that forbid them from skiing. Dale Stephens, the U.S. men’s downhill and super-G coach, would be happy if he could keep Rahlves on his downhill boards.

“There’s a lot of things he probably doesn’t tell us [about] some injury he’s limping with,” Stephens says. “He never tells us how exactly he got it.

“But we recognize that’s part of him. We try and make sure he’s making good decisions when he’s going out, doing other activities, and make sure he’s not taking unreasonable risks. But that’s part of what makes Daron fast. He enjoys the risk, enjoys pushing the limits a bit. You can’t take that away from him.”

Risk and Rahlves have always gone hand in hand.

Growing up in Truckee, he had a hard time keeping up with his father, Dennis, an adventurer who lived for the thrill of a safari hunt and loved racing motorcycles, speed-skiing and water-ski jumping.

“He was in the rodeo too,” Rahlves says. “That’s pretty intense, just jamming, roping a cow. He’s still doing it at age 55.”

Daron spent his youth playing catchup with his dad and hopes one day to pass his daredevil gene to his own son.

“If I had a kid, that kid’s going to ride dirt bikes and I’m going to try to kick his butt until he’s stomping all over me,” Rahlves jokes.

In 1993, between ski seasons, Daron won a world title in Jet Ski racing.

Another thing the U.S. ski team probably does not want to know: Rahlves likes to go helicopter skiing in Alaska, perch himself on top of a 3,000-foot vertical drop and roughly calculate his odds.

“I’m gripped, concerned, like, ‘How am I going to handle this?’” Rahlves says. “You know there’s high consequences. It’s not being freaking-out scared, but you have this nervousness. But you attack it, and go for it.

“The reward for something like that is huge.”

Rahlves was only half-joking about his ho-hum life as a ski champion. There have been perks. He gets “kick-downs” from his sponsors--Atomic, Sugar Bowl, Lange, Smith--and even gets to fly business class to Europe for World Cup races.

But he says these have been hard-fought upgrades.

He mentions former teammate Moe.

“He was an Olympic champion and still riding the back of the bus, riding coach,” Rahlves said. “He was just getting burned out. He wasn’t treated like someone who had achieved so much, who had brought so much attention to the ski team. He just got burned out, I know he did.

“But it is better now.”

Rahlves envisions what life might be like as an Austrian ski star.

“I’d make a couple million if I were in Austria,” he says. “That’s how it is over there. Over here, it’s not. I still have to buy my own truck.”

Rahlves knows how much would change if he were to stun the Olympic world, the way Johnson did in 1984, Moe in ’94 and Street in ’98.

Rahlves has not been spectacular this World Cup season and was ordinary when he finished 24th, 39th, 37th and 19th in four December races.

He is traditionally a slow starter, though, and has popped a few good races of late, finishing 13th in a downhill in Italy and ninth at the famed Lauberhorn downhill at Wengen, Switzerland.

He can’t wait until he steps in the start gate for the Olympic downhill, even if Austria’s Maier won’t be there.

The funny thing is, he couldn’t beat Maier and Eberharter in big races until he stopped thinking about them.

“I used to do that, and that’s when I already lost before I got to the gate,” he says.

Now, the focus is inward.

Win the race first.

Think like an Austrian.

“The only thing I think about is skiing that hill,” he says of the Olympic course. “I haven’t thought anything past the finish line. There’s no way to know what’s going to happen. No way to even fathom how it’s going to play out, so I’m just excited to get in the start and ski that hill, top to bottom, and that’s where it stops.”