The retirement of a sporting icon is always a time of tribute and rose-tinted reminiscing, but none more so in Austria where Hermann Maier, its most well-known ski racer, recently announced the end of his career.
Austria is a place that thrives on winter, not just for the tourist dollar that its ski resorts bring in, but because on a given weekend a large proportion of the population enjoy taking to the slopes themselves.
Skiing is its national sport, the top racers are its heroes and losing a race to Switzerland is akin to New Zealand succumbing to Australia in the Bledisloe Cup.
Maier’s record of 54 World Cup wins puts him among the most successful alpine skiers of all time, but it was the incredible ups and downs during 13 years of top-flight competition that made him so amazingly popular.
His early years weren’t exactly promising. Kicked off the development squad at age 15 and told he wasn’t going to succeed, he spent years working as a bricklayer through summer and ski instructor during winter in his hometown of Flachau.He finally managed to secure a spot on the national team at 23 after winning numerous regional races and then recording the 12th fastest time as a non-counting fore-runner at a World Cup event in 1996.
His first World Cup event victory came a year later in Garmisch, Germany and he quickly became the sport’s dominant force, picking up wins in giant slalom, super-giant and downhill races (the different disciplines are defined by the number of gates skiers have to pass through and the distance between them).
He won by skiing all out and taking big risks, appearing as though he was hurling himself down mountains. A defining moment came at the 1998 Nagano Olympics in the downhill, the fastest of all disciplines where athletes reach speeds of 160km/h.
The course was tricky and one particular left-hand corner over a small lip had caught out many of the early hopefuls. For anyone watching on TV, it was obvious Maier was carrying more speed approaching the troublesome turn than anyone else.
He hit the lip ridiculously fast, becoming instantly airborne. He was travelling so quick that he flew tens of metres through the air, rotating so that by the time he landed, he was upside down.
"I was very fast and there was a lot of wind from the back side," he said afterward. "And I went up in the air and was looking at the sky. I looked down at the snow and waited for the crash."
A photo taken mid-flight with Maier’s skis above his head and his face locked in grim expression went round the world, ending up on the cover of Sports Illustrated.
After tumbling through two layers of crash fencing, he came to a halt 50 metres away from where he took off. Amazingly he was able to walk away from this, but what made him the stuff of legend was that over the next few days, he went on to win two gold medals in the giant and super giant slalom race.
Over the next few seasons, Maier racked up wins but in August 2001 disaster struck. Colliding with a car whilst out on his motorcyclist, his career was written off. The accident was described as ‘near fatal’ and doctors were close to amputating the lower part of one of his legs.
He sat out the 2002 season but returned to competition in January 2003. A matter of days later, he won a super giant world cup race in Kitzbuehel, Austria – the most famous and most feared of all courses. It was a remarkable comeback earning Maier praise from all corners of the sporting world and reinforcing his ‘Herminator’ image.
Victories followed including a win at the biennial world championships in 2005 in the giant slalom, but by 2006 his dominance was waning despite picking up a silver and bronze medal at the Turin Winter Olympics.
In 2007 and for most of 2008 he failed to record a win. Perhaps indicative of the pressure Austria places on its skiers, Maier was regularly recording top ten finishes ahead of most of his team-mates, but faced increasing calls to retire, ‘because he wasn’t as good as he used to be.’
A public argument to that effect between him and retired-skier-turned-commentator Armin Assinger didn’t help his cause. Maier reacted to criticism by Assinger, a popular TV personality after a reasonable racing career, by saying he (Maier) had “won a lot more races than him.”
In November 2008, he recorded his 54th world cup race victory in Lake Louise, Canada, and it was to prove his last. In October, 2009 he announced his retirement citing physical problems.
He had previously stated that he was aiming for an appearance at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, however following recent knee surgery and the rigours of returning to fitness, selection for the Austrian team would not have been guaranteed.
Maier leaves a huge gap in the sport, although he is unlikely to drop away from the public eye. He appears in countless TV ads, on chatshows and in the celebrity gossip pages, but more than anything, he’ll be known for generations in Austria as one of the greatest ski racers that ever lived.
