Maier still racing for all the right reasons

With his win at Lake Louise last Sunday, Herman Maier has whet our appetites. We can believe, now, we could see the great one win again. There was a time, not so long ago, when Maier winning was a weekly event. In January of 1998, Maier’s results included six wins, a second, two thirds and a tenth (that last one was in slalom). That February he won two gold medals at the Nagano Olympics after—as so many people recall—he flew upside down through the air over a fence in the Olympic downhill.

 That’s all in two months. The Maier journey, from a tiny village (“It’s a village, not a town,” says Maier of Flachau) to the pinnacle of sports is the stuff of legend. Like most Austrian kids he wanted to be a ski racer. By age 15 his knees were so bad he had to abandon racing. As many have reported, he worked as a bricklayer, but he also loved skiing and worked as a ski instructor each season until he was 22 years of age. Only then did he even apply for a FIS license.

With his win at Lake Louise last Sunday, Herman Maier has whet our appetites. We can believe, now, we could see the great one win again. There was a time, not so long ago, when Maier winning was a weekly event. In January of 1998, Maier’s results included six wins, a second, two thirds and a tenth (that last one was in slalom). That February he won two gold medals at the Nagano Olympics after—as so many people recall—he flew upside down through the air over a fence in the Olympic downhill.
 

That’s all in two months. The Maier journey, from a tiny village (“It’s a village, not a town,” says Maier of Flachau) to the pinnacle of sports is the stuff of legend. Like most Austrian kids he wanted to be a ski racer. By age 15 his knees were so bad he had to abandon racing. As many have reported, he worked as a bricklayer, but he also loved skiing and worked as a ski instructor each season until he was 22 years of age. Only then did he even apply for a FIS license.
 

In 1995 he entered the Austrian National Championships and here is where the story gets really interesting. Starting 141st in the GS, he finished 18th. Austrian coaches, painted with a wide brush, are still around the finish when the 141st guy crosses. They noticed.
 

The next season Maier was put on the Europa Cup with mostly younger skiers. He won the overall title. By February coaches could no longer resist unleashing him. He got his first World Cup start in a GS at Hinterstoder. He was already 24. That was in 1996. We already know how he did two years later.
 

He would win the 1998, 2000, and 2001 World Cup overall titles.
 

The motorcycle accident occurred in August of that 2001 year. Skipping the brutal details it suffices to say it took until the end of the 2002 season before the titanium rod was removed from his right leg. He started skiing again that summer, and won the Kitzbuehel super G in 2003. In 2004 he won his fourth World Cup overall title, but the wins became further and further apart.
 

When he kicked this season off with the Lake Louise SG win it was his first in nearly three years.
 

“In the spring time I was ready to stop my career,” he says, citing a lack of motivation as a key element.
 

Maier is never more comfortable than he is on skis. He still walks with a bit of a limp, but skis with the fluid movements of a man born to ski. He will turn 36 this Sunday and is likely to celebrate by racing a World Cup GS at Beaver Creek—if the schedule holds.
 

He says he sometimes wakes up a little stiff and sore, but the summer training convinced him to try for another season, maybe two. Then he caught a bad cold, a flu that kept him down for a month. That was followed by a sore back caused by a hairline fracture in a disc doctors suspect is a remnant of the motorcycle crash. That was another four weeks and had him rethinking the wisdom of racing this season. But he still had thoughts of winning again.
 

“After August I felt for sure it would be possible, but then I had some troubles. I had the flu and then I had problems with my back, four weeks long, and it was very hard for me the last two months. I didn’t suspect to win in Lake Louise,” Maier says.
 

His body has undergone some trauma in its time and he is still learning to listen when it signals him. “My body for sure is not the same,” he says. “I am a little older and you need more time. I feel a little bit older. I’m not 25. In the past maybe I didn’t watch so much on my body. I was training only to go faster, faster, faster. Now I feel that if it’s okay, then it is great.”
 

The back pain is now tolerable. “There was a little pain (after Lake Louise) but it is a little bit better. I guess we have it under control now,” Maier says.
 

So he is re-energized and ready to continue the greatest ski racing career of a generation.
 

This weekend, at Beaver Creek he can do so at the site of some of his biggest triumphs and where he single-handedly changed the way people ski the Birds of Prey course.
 

Maier has won eight races in Beaver Creek, two of them World Championships (one of those a tie). He has attacked this course like few since and none before him. He is looking forward to Friday’s downhill and Saturday’s super G.
“For sure I have had great success here, so I like this mountain. It is one of the best downhills and one of my favorites,” he says.

Then Maier adds one more thing, one more reason a guy who loves this sport beyond all reason would want to participate. He knows his name, the great Hermann Maier, is a draw. “It is one of my favorite places,” he says. “And it is also great to watch on television, which is very important for the sport.”

 

Just as he has been, still is, and will always be.