The Snow Gods

The star turn of the Winter Olympics is Alpine skiing. Not everyone agrees with that, of course. The bobsledders and the luge nuts are partial to their own ways of traveling over ice and snow, as are the jumpers and the cross-country boys. The figure skaters live in a world of their own composed in equal parts of sport and dance, and the hockey fans are still caught up in that once-in-a-lifetime euphoria of the miracle at Lake Placid. But to most Americans, the thrill of the Olympics is the sight of young men and women skimming down mountains at breath-taking speeds on skis. That's Alpine skiing, and there are three ways that you can do it. You can race down at 80 miles an hour tucked low with your chin out over your knees, going balls out for speed in what has been described as a series of recoveries from impending disaster, pounding and pushing for the finish line below. You do it that way and they call it downhill racing. Or you can go down weaving through a complex series of gates at a much slower pace, a tightrope walker on snow and ice, a balletmaster dancing on knives, a measure of grace plus speed as you shift your edges with an exquisite precision that takes you once again to the banner at the finish line below. You do it that way and they call it a slalom. You can do it either of those ways, or you can combine the two and go down the mountain at almost the speed of the downhill, maneuvering gates with almost the precision of the slalom in an exhausting hybrid called G.S.--giant slalom--and that's Alpine skiing, too. It's all Alpine skiing when you go up on the mountain and then you ski down.

The two finest Alpine skiers in America and, arguably, in the world are a pair of twins from White Pass, Washington, named Phil and Steve Mahre, and taken together they are a unique and dramatic force in World Cup skiing, the major leagues of the sport. Fiercely competitive on the mountain, they are equally supportive of each other, and each acts as his brother's unofficial coach. The results have been impressive. For the past three years, Phil has been the winner of the over-all World Cup, while Steve is the reigning world champion in the giant slalom. Between them, they have won almost every honor in Alpine skiing, including an Olympic silver medal for Phil at Lake Placid, but the one prize that they have never won, and that historically has eluded every male American Alpine skier, is an Olympic gold. This month, the Mahre brothers will continue their quest for that gold at the XIV Olympic Winter Games, to be held in the improbable venue of Sarajevo, Yugoslavia.

•

Why Sarajevo? Well, why not? Set in the Dinaric range, it has mountains of Olympic proportions, including Bjelasnica, where the men's Alpine races will be run, and Jahorina, where the women will compete, plus a climate that promises snow 111 days a year to a depth of two to three meters. It has all the man-made facilities needed for Olympic competition: two indoor ice arenas and a speed-skating rink, meticulously constructed jumping hills, a slick-smooth serpentine for the bobsleds and the luges and a press center both functional and comfortable. Dozens of discos and hundreds of coffee shops dot the town for après-ski entertainment, and for the visiting shopper there is the bascarsija, the old market area, with streets of coppersmiths, bookbinders and other fine craftsmen. It all seems to be there, and yet . . why Sarajevo? To most of us, the name evokes the image of the slain Archduke Francis Ferdinand and the spark that ignited World War One. It does not bring to mind the picture of a conventional ski town, complete with Alpine yodels and cowbells, Schlagobers of snow on the rooftops and mulled wine before a roaring fire in the evening.

Phil Mahre puts the question into perspective. "I don't understand how places like that get into the Olympics. Until this year, they never even had a World Cup race there, and now it's the Olympics."

He says the words without rancor. He goes where the races are held and he skis the mountains as they come to him; but the words are said as he sits, relaxed, in the lounge of the Post Hotel, St. Anton, in the Austrian Tyrol, and the comparison with Sarajevo is obvious. St. Anton is the quintessential ski town: Alpine, pristine and colorful. St. Anton is where it all started, with the legendary Hannes Schneider, with the Arlberg Ski Club, formed in 1901, and with the Arlberg Kandahar race, the oldest and most prestigious of them all. In St. Anton, the racer feels a sense of historic continuity that exists no place else in the mountains, and perhaps because of that, the comparison with Sarajevo is unfair. Still, the comparison is there.

The Post Hotel is where the U.S. Ski Team is staying for the Arlberg-Kandahar races, and besides the Mahres in the lounge, there are other members of the men's team busily chatting up the girls, playing checkers, giving the video games a workout or just staring at their toes in a racer's contemplation. The Mahres, at 25, are the doyens of the team. Each is married, with one young child, and they travel with their families on the World Cup circuit, their presence lending a sense of stability to the younger, less experienced racers. They are intensely aware that time is running out for them in the youthful world of competitive skiing. The Olympics, another year, perhaps two at most, and then it will be over for them. For almost ten years, they have been the core of the team, and they wonder what it will be like once they are gone.

"I hope the team will produce some young kids who will take our places when we step down," says Steve, "but it's hard to say when. In the past, we had a lot of kids who showed potential and then just leveled off."

Phil nods in agreement. "We've got several good young racers this year. In the downhill, there's Steve Hegg and Jace Romick, there's Tris Cochrane and Andy Luhn. In the slalom, there's Danny Stripp, Tiger Shaw, Johnny Buxman...."

His voice trails off. The Mahres are slalom specialists, as is Buxman, and they can imagine what it must be like for him to ski in their shadow.

Not that Buxman feels that way. The handsome 23-year-old from Vail, Colorado, is blunt about it. "I'm not skiing in anybody's shadow," he insists. "This isn't meant disrespectfully--you have to respect what Steve and Phil have accomplished--but I feel that I'm as good as or better than they are. On any particular day, I can be the best slalom skier on the mountain."

Buxman isn't simply blowing steam or indulging in psychic pump priming. He really believes that. More important, so does head men's coach Konrad Rickenbach, whose primary areas of responsibility are slalom and giant slalom. "Bux has all the equipment," says Rickenbach, "the athletic ability and the technique. One of these days, he'll put it all together."

But that day has yet to come, and there are those on the team who fear it never will. Buxman's problem is that he doesn't finish races. He turns in outstanding training runs, but as of this day in St. Anton, he has finished only two races all year. Speed is no problem, but he constantly disqualifies himself by missing gates and, oddly enough, that most often happens at the very beginning of a run. Somewhere around the third, fourth or fifth gate, he'll miss the turn, and then his race is over before it has begun. It happens with depressing frequency. Some call it lack of concentration, but one of his downhill teammates disagrees, saying, "I could understand it if he blew out near the bottom, or even halfway down the hill, but how much concentration does it take to ski the first five gates?"

Rickenbach doesn't see it that way. To him, Buxman is like a novelist who knows what he wants to say but is too impatient to set the words down on paper one at a time. Not that he's lazy--anything but. He just hasn't learned yet that you ski a slalom course one gate at a time. When Buxman is standing in the starting gate, his head has already crossed the finish line. He has already skied the perfect slalom. Then he gets the start and he tries to do it all at once. In one explosive moment, he tries to run the entire race, top to bottom, and almost always, the result is a D.Q. (for disqualification) marked on his score sheet.

Buxman's family--father, mother and sister--are at St. Anton to watch him race in the Arlberg-Kandahar. The elder Buxman hopes that Rickenbach is right. "I hear the coaches say that John is basically the best skier on the team and I get goose bumps. But he doesn't seem to be able to finish. There has to be a reason for it."

Patience. Getting it all together. Concentration. Words.

•

With no Olympic experience and not a single World Cup race ever run on Bjelasnica, it was vital for Sarajevo to have a pre-Olympic tryout of the facilities during the 1983 season. Accordingly, a World Cup men's downhill was scheduled there for late January 1983, with other events to (continued on page 110)Snow Gods(continued from page 108) follow in subsequent weeks. The eyes of the international skiing community turned to the capital city of Bosnia, curious journalists made the unfamiliar trip and the implacable eye of ABC's Wide World of Sports surveyed the scene. It was meant as a moment of triumph, but on the day of the race, Sarajevo came up snake-bit.

The problem was the weather, as it often is in skiing. Statistically, the snow stays on the ground around Sarajevo for almost a third of the year to a depth of several meters, and subfreezing temperatures ensure a solid base for skiing. On race day, there was plenty of snow on the mountains, but there was also a hot sun, a balmy breeze and a temperature of 36 degrees Fahrenheit that made the Dinaric range seem more like the site for the Summer Olympics than for the Winter Games. Spectators peeled off parkas and sweaters as the mountain melted away, streaks of black and brown dirt appeared on the piste, and in the hospitality section of the press area, the line was in front of the iced-Coca-Cola booth while the hot Oval-tine went begging. Never mind that the skiing weather had been uniformly bad all over Europe that winter. Never mind that the same situation existed across most of the United States. Never mind that what was happening was a statistical glitch that should never occur two years in a row. For all of that, Sarajevo was snake-bit. After a two-hour delay, the race was postponed until the following day.

For the rest of that day and well into the night, soldiers of the Yugoslav army worked in a desperate attempt to save the race. Fresh snow was collected, dumped onto the course, sprinkled with chemicals to ensure freezing and tamped down firmly to form a solid base. By morning, the mountain looked itself again; but as the sun rose, the temperature rose with it, and by noontime, the course was a mess once more. U.S. Alpine director Bill Marolt stood at the finish line, staring unhappily up at the mountain. He shook his head and said, "The hill isn't any better than it was yesterday, but they'll probably run it. They have to."

He was right. The ABC cameras were ready, Sarajevo had to have its tryout, and so the race was run. Nobody was very happy about it, least of all the skiers, and the times were unimpressive, since, as Canada's Ken Read put it, "I wasn't exactly risking life and limb out there today." The crowd, too, was singularly subdued. Many had left Sarajevo after the postponement the day before, and those who stayed on seemed to lack the spirited enthusiasm traditional to a World Cup event. No clanging bells, no high-pitched yips as the racers sped by; only a passive acceptance of the results. Austria's Gerhard Pfaffenbichler and Franz Klammer took first and third, with the Canadian Steve Podborski sandwiched in between, and Sarajevo's Alpine tryout was an accomplished fact. After the race, many of the spectators stretched out in the sun to improve their tans.

The only American entered in the downhill at Sarajevo was Doug Powell of Chappaqua, New York, who finished a mildly respectable 20th. Powell was unhappy about the conditions on Bjelasnica, though he was too polite to put it into words. He didn't have to; his skis spoke for him. After the race, he showed them to Scott Shaver of Rossignol, one of five manufacturers' representatives who travel with the U.S. team and service the equipment.

"Will you look at that?" Powell said in dismay. There was a piece the size of his thumb gouged out of the bottom of one ski where a rock sticking up through the snow had slashed it. "Look, it goes right down to the base."

Shaver quickly slapped the bottoms together to hide the damage, muttering, "Thank God we didn't use the good skis today. This hill would have killed the R 'n' Rs."

To a downhill racer, R 'n' R equals rock 'n' roll, meaning the good skis that really move. A hot pair of slalom skis are similarly called discos. Shaver was not alone in his feelings. Very few racers were willing to risk their R 'n' Rs on Bjelasnica that day.

•

Billy Johnson wasn't at Sarajevo, but he is at St. Anton the following week for the running of the Arlberg-Kandahar. Unlike the slalom skier John Buxman, Johnson has finally put it all together. He is a hard-nosed, opinionated, thoroughly self-confident 23-year-old from Van Nuys, California, who is also a daring, flat-out downhill racer. In 1982, he was dropped from the team. Publicly, the coaches say that he showed up at training camp badly out of shape and made no attempt to correct the situation. Privately, they admit that it was his attitude as much as his physical condition that caused him to be dropped. Sitting at the bar at the Post Hotel, Johnson says otherwise.

"Training camp is a joke," he insists. "The coaches have already decided who's going to be on the team. What you do at camp doesn't mean a damn thing."

He takes a sip of beer, grins and points an indelicate finger upward. "But now they can't touch me. Not after what I've done this year."

What he has done so far this year is to win three out of four downhill races on the Europa Cup circuit and finish second in the fourth one. The Europa Cup tour ranks just below the World Cup, triple-A ball compared with the majors, and its downhill season ends early. Once that season was over, there was no question that the coaches would bring Johnson up for the rest of the World Cup tour, and with him came Andy Chambers, who finished second to Billy in his three victories.

Now it's the evening before the downhill at St. Anton, and Johnson is up in the big leagues, pitted against the finest downhillers in the world, men such as Peter Luescher, Podborski and Leonard Stock, who won the gold medal at Lake Placid in 1980. More, as a relative novice, Johnson will be starting far down the list, in 43rd position. In downhill racing, it is rare for anyone starting after the first 15 to win or even to turn in a ranking performance; after those first 15, the course is usually too chopped and rutted to post a good time. Still, it's enough for Johnson just to be up there again with the biggies. He orders a second beer from the girl in back of the bar, but he drinks only half of it before going up to bed. He may be a rebel, but he isn't a fool.

That same evening, the Arlberg Ski Club, the oldest such organization in the world, holds its annual dinner before the Arlberg-Kandahar race, and a visiting American is invited to enjoy "einen gemütlichen Abend." It is, indeed, an informal and congenial evening, and the only proper topic of conversation is skiing. The two-day Arlberg-Kandahar consists of a downhill and a slalom, the winner determined by a combination of the results, and the members argue hotly over the chances of the various Austrians entered. Austrians, mind you, no one else. Skiing is the national sport there, and to these people, the possibility of a foreigner's winning the Arlberg-Kandahar is as likely as the Tokyo Giants' beating Kansas City in the world series. Never mind that Steve Mahre won it last year. Never mind that Phil Mahre won it the year before. Accidents! Flukes! On a good day, even the Tokyo Giants could....

So the Austrian names are juggled as the cigar smoke thickens and dirndl-dressed girls carrying pitchers of wine pass around again and again. Klammer? Stock? First-rate downhills, but can they score high enough in the slalom?

Christian Orlainsky? Franz Gruber? (continued on page 120)Snow Gods(continued from page 110) The other side of the coin. Both are slalom specialists, but how will they do in the downhill?

Harti Weirather? Heads begin to nod. Sure, why not? He almost did it in '81. Weirather, he's just the boy who could do it this year.

The visiting American is asked what he thinks, but he is understandably reluctant to give his opinion. He is the only foreigner present--indeed, the only person from outside the precincts of the Arlberg--and the weight of skiing history is in this room. Karl Schranz, Austria's national hero, is waiting to hear what he has to say. Mrs. Franz Fahrner, whose father, Hannes Schneider, was also the father of Alpine skiing, is looking at him speculatively. Down the table, Rudi Matt, who won the world championship in slalom back in 1936, cocks an eyebrow, waiting. The visitor clears his throat nervously.

Phil Mahre. He says it softly and reluctantly.

A lot of frowns and shaking heads, waggling fingers and tongues clucking in disapproval. No, not this year, not again. A magnificent slalom skier, of course, but too weak in the downhill. It's going to take more than his usual 13th- or 14th-place finish, plus a good slalom, to win this weekend. Why, even the bookmakers--yes, Virginia, in Austria they bet on ski races--have Phil at 20 to one. Besides, he's had a bad year so far. No, no, forget what happened in 1981. On a good day, even the Tokyo Giants could....

Phil Mahre. He repeats the name more confidently, because he knows something they don't know. They weren't out at the mountain the day before, when the first training run was called off because of poor visibility. That left the racers free to ski on their own, and his Austrian friends did not see Phil come down the downhill course and take off from the forbidding Kangaroo Jump to do a 360-degree turn in mid-air out of sheer exuberance. A stunt, a gag, but it means that he's relaxed, at one with the mountain. The visitor makes three pronouncements, each firm and distinct:

Phil Mahre will place within the top five in the downhill tomorrow.

Someone named Mahre will win the slalom on Sunday.

Phil Mahre will win the Arlberg-Kandahar combined.

Then he retreats behind his glass of wine as the arguments rage.

•

The people of Sarajevo wish the world would forget that World War One started there. They figure that it's a bum rap to hang on a town, and they've been fighting it for years. They'll tell you that the assassination of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand was only one of the factors that triggered the war and that if Gavrilo Princip hadn't killed him, something else would have sparked the flames just as easily. Not that they are shy about the assassination. Yesterday's terrorist is tomorrow's freedom fighter, and so today there is a Gavrilo Princip Museum in town, and on the street where he stood to fire the shots are his footprints set in concrete, like a Bosnian version of Grauman's Chinese Theater. Still, they wish the world would forget, and they hope that the XIV Winter Olympiad will give another meaning to the name Sarajevo.

To that end, they have spruced up the town. New hotels have been built in the mountains, present facilities have been remodeled and the picturesque aspects of Sarajevo--the mosques and the minarets, the market places, the arching bridges over the Miljacka River--have been highlighted. During the Olympic weeks, artists from all over Yugoslavia will perform, including opera companies, theatrical troupes and local folk-music groups; while for filmgoers, there will be a reprise of the Belgrade International Film Festival in Sarajevo's 11 cinemas. An all-out effort has been made to coat this essentially provincial place with at least a thin veneer of Western amenities, and as the ultimate gesture in a city where the second language, if any, is German, the taxi drivers, porters, waiters and desk clerks have all been given a crash course in basic English to help them deal with the influx of 45,000 foreigners expected in February. It sounds good, but doubts begin to arise when you ask where all those people are going to sleep.

The 10,000 athletes, judges and officials will be housed in the Olympic Village. Good.

The 5000 journalists will be housed in a special block of houses. Good.

The 30,000 spectators will be accommodated in hotels and private homes.

Good--I think. How many hotel beds will be available?

Fifteen thousand.

That's when the doubt strikes home. A solid 50 percent of the total, 15,000 people, put up in private homes? What happens if Aunt Millie gets sick and the bed isn't available? What happens if Uncle Boris dies and the household goes into mourning? What happens if Grandpa comes for dinner and stays for a week? What happens to all those beds?

The answer to all those questions is always nema problema, which can be taken to mean anything from "No problem" to "God will find a way" to "I prefer to think of myself as an optimist."

They may be right. It's better than worrying about it.

It has to be remembered that Sarajevo is not a ski town; it is a multicultural city, mostly Moslem in population, with mountains attached. Also attached is a modern industrial complex that provides the area with a cap of smog so thick that at times you cannot see the mountains from the town or the town from the mountains. Still, once above the smog line, the air is fine and clear and the mountains are of Olympic, if not quite World Cup, standards. The difference is important and deserves explanation. In almost every other sport, the Olympic standard is the highest, but not in Alpine skiing, where the measure of excellence is a World Cup mountain.

"In the Olympics, you really don't want an extremely difficult downhill course," says Al Greenberg of Skiing. "You see, you've got too many racers going on that course who aren't of world-class quality. In World Cup races, you get the best in the world and only the best, but in the Olympics, every nation gets to enter four people. You have skiers racing from places like Korea and China and Iran, people who have never been on a World Cup course in their lives. It would be unfair to them and dangerous, too."

So Bjelasnica qualifies as an Olympic mountain, but it took some hard work and an ingenious contrivance to get it into that category. The Olympic rules say that a downhill course must have a vertical drop, as distinguished from the over-all length, of at least 800 meters. When the International Olympic Committee measured Bjelasnica, it came up nine meters short and left it to the local organizers to provide a solution. In simplicity, the answer was worthy of Jimmy Durante, who once said, "Don't raise the bridge, men, lower the river." The organizers built a four-story restaurant on the very peak of the mountain, and its rooftop beer terrace is the starting ramp for the downhill run, with the skier descending a chute through the dining area and out onto the course.

"We were able to add nine more meters to the descent that way," says Drago Bozja, the sports director of the committee, and the result is the most unusual starting gate in ski racing.

Doug Powell confesses, "When I made my start, I was afraid I was going to hook somebody's beer stein with my ski tip."

•

You never know when a story is going to turn on its tail and smack you in the (continued on page 146)Snow Gods(continued from page 120) face. It happens time after time and you never get used to it.

Phil and Steve Mahre are technical skiers, which means that they specialize in slalom and giant slalom. They do not compete in downhill races unless the event, like the Arlberg-Kandahar, is tied to one of their specialties and gives them a chance to score combined points. Whenever that happens, Phil invariably does better than Steve in the downhill; but even so, he never finishes better than ninth, usually between tenth and 15th. Fair enough; you get World Cup points for finishing in the first 15, and he's not supposed to ski downhill, anyway. He wasn't trained for it and it's not expected of him. So Saturday morning at St. Anton, starting the downhill in the 16th spot, Phil drops down the Arlberg-Kandahar course like an elevator with its cable cut and comes in fifth behind Luescher, Silvano Meli, Weirather and Podborski, all of them top downhill racers, and ahead of a host of other aces. It's a personal best for him, a triumph, and it puts him in a commanding position to cop the combined title the next day when the slalom is run. So there's your story, right?

Wrong.

By the time Billy Johnson is ready to make his run out of the 43rd spot, most of the people at the finish line have left to belly up to the booths selling Würstchen and beer and Schnaps. In the press area, the journalists are similarly occupied, the only difference being that their food and booze are on the house. The quality of the freebies varies erratically on the World Cup circuit, and everyone in the press area agrees that the Schnaps at St. Anton rates high. It's a good time of day, with a light snow falling, the sun still bright, the cowbells clanging merrily and the Schnaps going down like icy bullets. Nobody is paying much attention to the race anymore. In effect, it's over. After the first 15 or so skiers have chopped up the course, it becomes progressively more difficult to finish high in the standings, and after the first 30, it is impossible.

Over the public-address system, the announcer says, "Starting number 43, Billy Johnson of the U.S.A." The announcer is a professional who works the ski meets all over Austria, known for his ability to call out the numbers and the standings quickly in four languages. He is also somewhat of a cheerleader and a clown, able to whip up the crowd to a pitch of enthusiasm one minute and have them laughing the next.

The numbers begin to flash on the electronic scoreboard next to the finish line, hundredths of seconds ticking off as Johnson starts his run. He can't be seen from the finish line, but somewhere up there, he has left the starting gate at the top of Kapall to career down the Fasch-Schuss, negotiate the compression turn at Laviert-S, skitter across the Himmeleck, and now he's coming up to the Stall Passage, where his intermediate time will be registered. The numbers flash on the board, and they're low, too low. It has to be a mistake, but it isn't.

"Achtung! Achtung!" The announcer's voice goes up a couple of notches, gulping with excitement, and heads in the crowd whip around to see the board. Languages jumble together as he shouts, "Achtung, hier kommt Billy Johnson, und he's coming like schnell."

By now, he's past the Bärensprung, over the Taja Schuss and coming up to the Kangaroo Jump, where the crowds are thick and the bells are booming. You can see the Kangaroo from the bottom and you can see him take it, grabbing air but not too much as he comes off the lip, holding his tuck, landing flat and dropping, like a stone, down the Moos-Zielschuss in the final run to the finish. A roar goes up as the numbers stop flashing and the computer registers his time and placement.

It's 2:05.50. Sixth place.

Sixth place starting from the 43rd spot against the best in the world. If you don't know World Cup racing, it doesn't sound like much, but it is and everybody on that mountain knows it. The cowbells are going crazy now, those who aren't shouting are laughing with delight and the entire U.S. team is around the kid and pounding him on the back. Even the Austrians from the Arlberg Club are grinning. It's an intensely emotional scene, but somehow you have the feeling that something is missing. Over the cheers of the crowd, the public address system should be playing Frank Sinatra singing, "I did it my way."

•

There are all kinds of coaches on the U.S. Ski Team. Alpine director Bill Marolt is the chairman of the board, responsible for the women's team as well as the men's, and his obligations keep him on the move. Andreas Rauch, the downhill coach, is an earnest motivator cast in the Austrian tradition. Tom Kelly, slalom and giant slalom, is silver-haired and ruddy-faced, at 50 an avuncular figure to the kids on the team. And then there is Konrad Rickenbach.

The head coach of the men's team was born in Switzerland, raised in California, and at 28 he is only a few years older than the young men for whom he is responsible. In a sport in which neither the athletes nor the coaches are noted for their introspection, Rickenbach is an intense, almost angry purist, as much involved in the aesthetic as in the physical side of skiing. He is a mountain man in the truest sense, and his quiet ambition is to travel the range of the Andes from north to south in an anthropological study of the various cultures inhabiting the chain. Late at night, after the downhill race and on the eve of the slalom, he tries to sort out his feelings about the sport.

"Those of us who make a living out of skiing sometimes forget what it's all about and where it all started," he says sadly.

Someone suggests, "Maybe that's because you've never had to stand at the top of a hill and force yourself to ski it even though you were scared silly."

He nods his agreement. "That's true. We deal so much with excellence and fearlessness that we forget that skiing is based on a man's ability to overcome his basic fear of speed and high places, and the need to perform past the limitations that his body imposes on him."

And has he never felt that fear?

Rickenbach smiles but does not answer. He's been around too long to answer questions like that. Besides, he's got a sadness on him tonight.

Many things sadden Konrad Rickenbach, but what saddens him most is what he sees as the erosion of the standards of the sport he loves, and the erosive agent is, of course, television. Like everyone else, he knows that there are races run every year--at the wrong time of the day or under substandard conditions--that would never be run if it weren't for television.

"But you can't make television the villain of the piece," he points out. "It isn't as simple as that. Television isn't a Devil with horns and a tail; it doesn't force organizers to run dangerous races, like that one at Sarajevo. Television in sports is an abstract force, just as evil is. Television simply says, 'Look, you run a race and we'll pay you for the right to carry it. If you don't run a race, or if you don't run it when we say you should, then you don't get paid.' Television doesn't make the final decision."

"Which means that skiers are often forced to race under unsafe conditions?"

He looks disgusted at the need to put it into words. The year before, there had been rumors of a threatened strike, of certain teams' and certain coaches' refusing to race under certain conditions. Eventually, the talk had blown away and nothing had come of it. Now Rickenbach shrugs expressively and says, "Sure, that's what it means. What else could it mean?"

Too much tristesse for one evening, and with the slalom the next day, it's time to go to bed. On the skiing circuit, you don't stay up late on the night before a slalom, because a slalom starts at ten in the morning. A downhill is different. The downhill doesn't start until noon.

•

The American quest for an Olympic gold medal in Alpine skiing has been going on for almost a quarter of a century, beginning back in 1960 when Buddy Werner was the first American man ever conceded a chance to make it in what was then a totally European sport. But just before the games, Werner broke a leg in training and wound up watching the races on crutches. Death of a dream, phase one; and four years later, the dream seemed truly dead when Werner was killed in an avalanche. In that same year, 1964, Billy Kidd and Jimmy Heuga finished second and third in the slalom at Innsbruck, but that was the end of medal production until 1980 at Lake Placid, when Phil Mahre, coming back from a near-crippling broken ankle, took the silver medal in the slalom. For the Mahre brothers, now near the end of their racing careers, Sarajevo represents the last chance to fulfill their part of that quest for the gold, and until late last year, the one man most likely to stand in their way seemed to be Ingemar Stenmark of Sweden, who edged out Phil at the last Olympics and is the winner of 17 World Cup skiing titles. Then, only three months before the start of the Olympics, the International Ski Federation declared him ineligible for the 1984 games. The federation's ruling stemmed from a special B license that Stenmark holds, allowing him to accept money directly from sponsors without losing his status for World Cup competition. Money going to skiers, such as the Mahre brothers, who do not have such a license must first be channeled through their national ski federation, which then rewards individual competitors. The B license, however, applies to World Cup races but not to the Olympics, and when Stenmark changed his status in 1980, it was assumed that he had given up thoughts of further Olympic competition.

Then, as Steve Mahre puts it, "The federation decided to let him compete at Sarajevo anyway, its attitude being that it would be a hollow Olympics without him. It wasn't right. Phil and I could have done the same thing and we would have made a lot more money that way over the past few years, but we didn't, because we wanted to continue to compete in the Olympics."

Steve was not the only one who felt it wasn't right, and as opposition mounted to the midstream change of course, the federation announced that Stenmark would not, after all, be allowed to compete in the 1984 games. The disqualification of the defending gold medalist in the slalom and giant slalom altered the complexion of the fields in those two events, promoting the chances of Stenmark's countryman Stig Strand, Andreas Wenzel of Lichtenstein, Yugoslavia's Bojan Krizaj, Max Julen and Pirmin Zurbriggen of Switzerland and Austria's Gruber, Orlainsky and Hans Enn. But as the date for the Olympics drew closer, everyone agreed that the games would not be quite the same without Stenmark carving his precise, mathematical turns on the mountainside.

But that is all in the future on this second day of the Arlberg-Kandahar race at St. Anton. The slalom section is run in two heats, the lowest combined time providing the winner. The first heat goes off promptly at ten in the morning, and when it is over, the leader is Andreas Wenzel of Liechtenstein, followed by Stenmark, then Steve and Phil Mahre. Buxman misses a gate at the top of the run and does not finish. He goes back to the hotel and has a quiet lunch with his family.

The course is reset for the afternoon run, and Tom Kelly comes down to report that it is "absolutely bulletproof," slick-hard with ice from being watered over and frozen. They do that in big-league skiing. Ice is the nemesis of the recreational skier, to be avoided at all costs; but if you can't ski on ice, then you can't ski slalom on the World Cup tour.

For the second run, they reverse the order of finish of the five best times, and at this point, Phil can take off some of the steam, since any decent finish in the slalom, combined with his fifth in the downhill the day before, will give him the Arlberg-Kandahar title. Instead, he attacks the course with his usual passion, slashing down the mountainside to finish with a combined time of 1:51.61. Then comes Steve, and the two look so much alike that it's like watching instant replay. The same drive, the same hot pursuit of time, but this time it's Steve who is a fraction faster, coming in at 1:51.44 to edge ahead of his brother.

"Achtung, Achtung," goes the P.A. system. "Ingemar Stenmark on the course."

Eyes up on the mountain as Stenmark comes into view, carving his precise, mathematical turns, and he's coming fast enough to make you gasp, because if he keeps it up, he's a winner for sure. Fast, too fast, he's whipping through the gates, and in that speck of time an evil thought forms, unsportsmanlike, unworthy, but your lips form the words as you silently say, Fall down, goddamn it, fall down.

And he falls down.

Just as you say it, he falls, not hurt, but he's out of it and it's all over. Wenzel slips in behind Steve to take second, but the rest of the field is out of contention, and it's another big day for the Mahre brothers. Phil has won the A-K combined and Steve has won the slalom. As predicted.

One by one, the Austrian friends come over to offer congratulations to the visiting American. Their handshakes are firm and their smiles are real. It's the skiing that counts, after all, and perhaps the unspoken thought that the Mahre twins won't be around to plague them much longer.

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Later that afternoon, the U.S. Ski Team divides itself as it leaves St. Anton, the Mahre brothers going on to World Cup races in France and West Germany while the younger skiers head back home for the U.S. National Championships, where the twins will later join them. As the daylight fades, Phil Mahre is the first to leave, his wife and baby daughter beside him on the front seat of the Subaru team car that is his for the season. He looks tired, not just physically but worn by the pressures, and he admits that racing has not been the same for him this year. It's not as much fun anymore, and a fraction of the motivation may be missing. After all, he has accomplished so much. He has just won the Arlberg-Kandahar again, he is well on his way to capturing his third straight over-all World Cup championship and he has even developed a late-career proficiency in the downhill. No more worlds to conquer? Yes, the one that has always eluded him, and he will try for it once more next year in Sarajevo. One last hill to climb, one last mountain to ski.

Steve Mahre bustles out of the hotel to complete the loading of his car. His wife and daughter are in the front seat, waiting while he shoves a final package into the back. The car looks like part of a gypsy caravan, loaded down with the impedimenta of a family living on the road. Steve pushes the package in firmly and slams the hatch shut, a satisfied man. Winning the slalom leg of the Arlberg-Kandahar has meant a lot to him. For years, he skied slightly obscured by the shadow of his twin; but now, at least in slalom and giant slalom, they stand together at the top and the gold in Sarajevo is within either man's reach. He slips behind the wheel, revs the engine once and pulls away.

The kids come out of the Post Hotel in small groups, shepherded by the coaches. As if by instinct, they flock around Billy Johnson; he's a leader now, part of the future. As a downhill specialist, he did not compete in the slalom today and so was not in contention for the combined medal, but this weekend has marked a quantum jump for him. No more starting in 43rd position; he'll be up with the big boys now, with a decent chance to win, and Sarajevo, which was a dream at the beginning of the season, has turned into reality.

To some of the others, Sarajevo is a question mark. Doug Powell, a veteran, wonders if he will even make the team. Andy Luhn wonders how fast his injuries will heal and if he will be ready. John Buxman wonders when all that natural athletic ability is going to coalesce and make him a winner. They walk to the cars, passing through pools of light, and the powder snow falls on their very young, very serious faces.

"Sarajevo had to have its tryout, and so the race was run. Nobody was very happy about it."

" 'In World Cup races, you get the best in the world and only the best, but in the Olympics....' "

"The numbers flash on the board, and they're low, too low. It has to be a mistake, but it isn't."