Wednesday — January 28, 2004

The ultimate race that didn’t get watched

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Lake Tahoe’s Daron Rahlves, one of the most successful U.S. downhillers in history, has enjoyed great success on the fabled Streif course at Kitzbuehel, Austria. With undisguised respect, he calls the Hahnenkamm downhill "the ultimate race." If Reggie Jackson was "Mr. October" in baseball because of his post-season heroics, Rahlves is certainly "Mr. January" in downhill skiing. He’s been on the podium at Kitzbuehel five times in the last four years, including two wins. For an American, that’s the equivalent of crashing a wild Austrian party and making off with the prettiest girl. Oompah!

The mystery is why the American public, two years away from the 2006 Winter Olympics at Torino, Italy, has virtually no connection with the exploits of Rahlves and also doesn’t know much about World Cup overall contender Bode Miller of New Hampshire. The U.S. men’s alpine team is heading into the final six weeks of the World Cup racing on the biggest roll in memory—elevated by its success during the 64th Hahnenkamm weekend to second place in the Nation’s Cup standings. On Monday, however, the U.S. Ski Team’s Hahnenkamm success was buried on the next-to-last page of USA Today’s weekend sports—a 14-page edition filled with six pages of coverage of Super Bowl football, still a week away. With the exception of Outdoor Life’s ongoing World Cup television coverage, you would have thought that the Hahnenkamm—the Super Bowl of alpine racing with close to 100,000 fans watching Saturday’s race—was taking place on the far side of the moon.

This country’s provincial attitudes toward what’s important in the rest of the world are well established, but we usually manage to focus our attention span when an American athlete does well overseas. But not in the case of Rahlves and Miller. Last weekend, instead of the ultimate test of man against mountain, U.S. sports watchers were given the made-for-television Winter X Games, Super Bowl hoopla, actor Ashton Kushton’s rants about how he’d cover Shaquille O’Neal on the basketball court, and other crossover stunts designed to link sports of no connection to the advertising dollar.

It’s outrageous when you think about the stories unfolding on the World Cup this winter. The biggest, outside of Miller’s pursuit of the title, is the truly remarkable comeback of Austria’s Hermann Maier. A three-time World Cup champion, Maier suffered dire injuries in a near-fatal motorcycle crash in 2001. His lower right leg was nearly torn off by the collision. Thousands of hours of rehabilitation and training have restored Maier to the top of his trade again, just two years after the crash, and he is challenging for the overall crown once again.

Check out Burkhard Bilger’s marvelous article on Maier, Miller and alpine skiing in general in the Jan. 26 edition of "The New Yorker." And check out Outdoor Life’s TV replay of the Hahnenkamm Thursday at 8 p.m. Mountain Standard Time on local cable channel 40. It would have been nice to see it on network TV. In fact, whichever network carries the Olympics should be obligated to televise the Hahnenkamm each year, but skiing aficionados will take what they can get.

 

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