Sport: Tuschen

• Share

The ski track writhed like a great snow snake across the face of Graukogel Mountain, cut down a steep slope, then slithered through piney woods to dive into the dangerous Himmelreich (Kingdom of Heaven). Skiers from 15 nations squinted down the demanding course at Bad Gastein, Austria last week and resigned themselves to the painful possibility of an afternoon of pratfalls. As for winning the downhill race, everyone took it for granted that the best men on the mountain were in the contingent from nearby Kitzbühel, led by Olympic Champion Toni Sailer, 21. The run for the "Silver Jug of Bad Gastein" as less an international contest than an intramural competition between the stu dents of Kitzbühel's famed old Skimeister Christian Pravda. The big question was: Which one of the Kitzbühel kids would break the Graukogel record still held by their old teacher.

The answer, delivered in three whooshing installments: all of them. In the tense race against tradition, Champion Sailer

(rhymes with miler) took an unexpected tumble. He got up quickly, and his time (2:40.1) was still better than the master's record of 2:53.1, but it placed him third, behind his home-town pals Hias Leitner and Anderl Molterer.

Two Sausages. No one, least of all Toni himself, thought that his second defeat in two years of international downhill racing called for an alibi. The handsome Austrian was still the man to beat in the approach ing surge of championship races on the swiftest ski runs of Europe and the U.S.

Son of a Kitzühel master plumber who also happened to be custodian of the local ski club, Toni has spent his life in the shadow of the "Streif," one of the toughest downhill runs in the Alps. He had hardly learned to walk before his father had strapped him onto a pair of skis, and at six, he was taking the Streif in stride. It wasn't enough just to make the run— Papa Anton Sailer used to stud the nar row strip of snow with pine twigs to force Toni into tight, precise turns, to teach him control. Sometimes the youngster shot the Streif eleven times in a single day—a downhill distance greater than a slide down Mt. Everest. When he turned n, Toni won his first competition and was rewarded with two sausages, a prize he was delighted to take home in those hungry days.

Toni put on height and weight, which worried him because of the notion that a skier has to be small and nimble to get to the very top. Still Sailer stuck to his practice, and he found that his extra size (5 ft. 11 in., 180 Ibs.) gave him extra strength and a distinct advantage in long, grueling races. He concentrated on technique. "It's only a mixture of drauflos-fahren (going at top speed) and trying to use my head," insists Toni, oversimplifying his success. He sticks basically to a racing style developed by Pravda and Toni Seelos, and now so widely used that it has become the international style. Skis are kept parallel and close together, arms and hands are held close to the body, and turns are made by a swinging of the hips referred to as wedeln (tail-wagging).