Sport: King of the Hill

A Yank wins the World Cup

On any given day, Ski Racer Phil Mahre of Yakima, Wash., cannot be sure of beating his own family: his twin brother Steve is just as talented and only slightly less consistent than he. But last week Phil became the first American in history to win the sport's highest award, the World Cup.

Mahre, 23, went into the last race of the season, a giant slalom at Laax, Switzerland, needing a third-place finish or better to edge out the great Swedish slalom and giant-slalom specialist Ingemar Stenmark in the winter-long Cup competition. At the end of the two giant-slalom runs at Laax, Mahre had a combined time of 2 min. 40.05 sec. That put him in second place for the day behind Alexander Zhirov, a rising Soviet star, who came in at 2 min. 39.80 sec. Stenmark was third, at 2 min. 40.24 sec. But Mahre's finish was enough to seal his Cup victory, giving him a season's total of 266 points to Stenmark's 260. Zhirov was third with 185 points, and Steve Mahre was fourth with 155.

Phil's triumph over his friend Stenmark, gold medal winner in the giant slalom at the 1980 Lake Placid Winter Olympics, had been a long time coming. He was second to Stenmark in World Cup points in 1978, and third for each of the past two seasons. No one on the ski tour doubted that this likable, easygoing American had the ability or the courage to win. He had gritted out last year's third-place finish, and a silver medal in slalom at Lake Placid, on an ankle shattered the year before and still mending.

There was another equally important factor. When a change in Cup rules two seasons ago favored skiers who race all three Alpine events, Phil, a slalom and giant-slalom specialist, set about training intensively for the frightening and dangerous downhill. Stenmark is so accomplished at slalom and giant slalom that he not only wins effortlessly, but also controls the manner of his winning—typically skiing a safe, relatively slow run, and then a second run just fast enough to beat the field on combined time. Stenmark refused to enter downhill races last season. He was narrowly beaten in the World Cup by Andreas Wenzel of Liechtenstein, a three-event man.

Whether the attempt by World Cup officials to revise three-event racing makes sense is a matter for angry argument. Jean-Claude Killy, who won three gold medals at the 1968 Olympics, was the last man who could dominate all three events. There is general acknowledgment that Stenmark, by specializing, has carried slalom and giant-slalom skills further than Killy ever did. New three-event men, presumably, will not be able to reach Stenmark's brilliant but relatively narrow perfection. (Why not add a fourth event, exasperated slalomists grumble—like ski jumping, after all. Or a fifth—say, a 50-km cross-country race?)