Not the Best Ever, But Almost

Today marks the retirement of one of the true legends of our sport: Herman Maier. I personally rank Maier second all-time, behind only Ingemar Stenmark, but who's to say how many races he would have won if not for his horrific motorcycle accident. Perhaps he would have eclipsed even Stenmark.

 

Even as it is, Maier had a phenomenal career. He won four overall World Cups, 54 Cup races, two Olympic golds, four World Championships and a staggering 10 discipline titles.

He built the template for the current style of World Cup skiing: fast in GS, agile in DH, using elements of both to win in Super G; he was the first champion to grow up in the era in which Super G was a mainstream event. Maier is without a doubt the all-time greatest Super G skier.

More than anything else, Maier hated to lose. He was tough as nails and unrelenting on the race course. I was a big Maier fan, and I'll miss him.

Edited by prickly - 10/13/09 at 6:07am

WHAT? NOOOOOO!!!

I guess his knees weren't sound. I would have thought he'd stick around for the Olympics, take a shot at a medal in the Super G. And make a huge wad of cash for the season. One of my all-time favorites (along with Stenmark, Kjus and a few others), sad to see him go.

Good story on skiracing.com  Sounds like he wants to end it while in peak condition, and may have had some doubts about the grind of another season. With the timing, following his first time on snow after his knee scope, it does make me wonder if he still has lingering knee problems. I hope not. I agree, the man was an incredible force, and a tremendous competitor. One of the absolute best, for sure. Sad to see it come to a close. I wish him all the best.

I'd go something like:

1. Stenmark
2. Maier
3. Tomba
4. Ghiradelli

Gets tricky after that, with Zurbriggen, Thoeni, Eberhardter all in the mix, no?

What, no Killy?

I knew I should have put a disclaimer in. I was only including skiers in the Serge Lang World Cup era, though Killy did win World Cups too, I guess. Thoeni is before my time, but Killy is way before.  

Let's say post 1960s.

And I suppose Phil Mahre might rank up there with Eberhardter.

Back then they didn't have Super G, and Killy won all three events at the Olympics in France, although one win was suspect because of the disqualification of Karl Schranz in the fog, but regardless, he totally dominated in his time.

No doubt. His time was just too long before mine. I might have seen Thoeni ski on the World Cup, but for sure I didn't see Killy.

Thoeni won the Cup, what, four times? He was no slouch. He's revered like a God here, BTW. Mahre won three Cups, pretty astounding. Hard to get over the fact that he was a non-factor in downhill, but he was pretty solid too. Suppose when it's all said and done, Svindal will be a factor on this list too.

Someone mentionded Kjus, but I would add Aamodt to my list of favorites.  Of course we will see how Bode's career plays out in ski racing history.

Sorry to see Hermann call it quits. Good luck to him in the future, I think he really loved what he did.  I remember him at the pre-olympic races at Snowbasin.  When the race was cancelled, the austrian coaches demanded that the team go to the gym.  Maier refused, & decided to go ski powder with the locals on his DH training skis.  As he started down under the Strawberry Gondola, he threw & stuck a huge Heli 360, it was pretty cool!
Thanks Hermann.
JF

He threw that same 360 during the actual race. Didn't stick it though. It was still pretty cool!


I don't rate Aamodt as high as Kjus, simply because he "only" took home one World Cup; one of the Norwegians should have won the year Alphand won, really.

Bode is not so far off, having won races in every discipline, World Championships in like four and of course two overall World Cups. Not to mention Olympic silver; even Giradelli never got an Olympic gold. And Bode does get one more shot at that.

BTW, Tomba probably got robbed of one Cup overall by the rules (and the same was true in at least two other cases for Stenmark), but his Olympic totals are a little inflated by the adjustment of the Olympic schedule; two Games were held within two years, at one point. Eberhardter, obviously, will always be considered a "replacement" winner only in Maier's absence, though he was a damn good racer in his own right. Zurbriggen doesn't get a lot of love, but he was  very special skier too.

My list includes Aamodt over Kjus.  Like Stenmark & Tomba in my view he was an innovator of technique, who took it to all disciplines.

 Quote:

My list always includes Pirmin.

JF

Maier is an absolute legend, you could tell a mile away it was his run watching the WC on TV - such a powerful skier.

You have to put Killy into this mix.  Yes he was in the early days of World Cup, and there were fewer disciplines to medal in.  It may take a while for anybody to take all the alpine racing gold in the same Olympics.

 These guys all have a certain drive that is so rare in any endeavor.  Maier, will be missed and leaves a huge opening in the sport for somebody.  Nature abhors a vacuum, ski racers all adore the idea of filling this one.

I love SG. Go inspect, and take one run, at speed, A lot to it, and nobody has ever skied it better than HM. We'll miss him, and he gave us a lot of great film! Thanks!

The "best of all time" is always a fun discussion, and based on criteria, you can support a number of them. I always weigh in on Killy's 1966-1967 season. Won 23 of the 30 races, and all five DH's. That was the first year of the overall WC. Travel was a lot more difficult in those days. He came very close to retiring afterwards, at the age of 24. He decided to race one more year, as the Olympics were in his backyard. And after the three golds, he retired. I think, before his 25th birthday. Short career. Dominant season, and dominant games the following year.

Killy did come back briefly for the short-lived Pro Dual Slalom Tour.  A friend of mine actually raced against him in the Dual.  In the starting gate my friend looked over and said to Killy "good luck."  Killy looked back and said "f**k you" and then smoked him in their race.

Stenmark
Everyone else. 

I agree with Phil. My only asterisk on Stenmark is that maybe, maybe Maier eclipses him in number of races won if he doesn't have that accident, and then it's a very different story. But that is a big if.

I say Kjus over Aamodt, to me just a much more distinctive skier (I'll never forget the way he smoothed out the bumps on the Val Gardena downhill, simply phenomenal). I also have a soft spot for Thomas Stangassinger, about the cleanest slalom skier I've ever seen.

Maier to me is the one guy who sometimes won even when he wasn't on his day, he was just such a tiger, and hated to lose.

There's one French guy who doesn't surrender!!

I do wonder how long Killy would have extended his career if he had been born, say, 20 years later.

Geez, between that Surrender Monkey joke and my dissing Luc Alphand, we're practically begging Philippe to come out and play. Phillipe? You out there? Miss hearing from you...

My surrender joke was in good fun...I know some history and remember the names Lafayette and Rochambeau. The USA and France should ALWAYS be friends.

Was there really a Rochambeau? I thought that was just a Cartman joke.

And the cool thing about our friend Philippe is he could take it and give it back. Philippe? You out there?

Here's an excellent book review of Maier's The Run of My Life (scroll down the page).

My vote for best ever is Stenmark, without question. 86 WC wins, and 5 Olympic and World Championship golds. But what really gets me is is consistency. He won over a third of his WC starts, and was on the podium something close to two-thirds of the time. In addition to the three overall WC's, I think he won something like eight each in SL and GS.  I also think that his WC wins are close to even between GS and SL. Really incredible. I guess that you can debate the pro's and con's of not skiing SG or DH, the change in calculations for the overall WC, etc. But I doubt if there will ever be anybody close to his win percentages, and podium results, though, let alone the wins. But records are there to be broken.

I agree, without the accident, HM may well have piled on a number of more wins. 54 is pretty stupendous, regardless. I guess that Stenmark is my tech guy, and HM my speed guy. But my "one season" guy is Killy.

Pretty cool, too, that the two best of all time were such different personalities. You could even extend that to the rest of my top four:

 

Stenmark: shy, reserved, modest.

Maier: aggressive, daring, fearless.
Tomba: flamboyent, social, egotistical.
Giradelli: calculating, precise, methodical.

Very sad about Maier, but I can understand wanting to retire before completely breaking yourself.  I think that the few weeks of training he's had pointed out that there was some fear, which tends to lead to injury at the elite level in events like super-G.  Good on him for taking the reasoned way out.

If I had to rank the World Cup era men over the years (retired skiers only).... tough, very tough.

1. Ingemar Stenmark
What's not to like?  86 wins, amazing consistency, technical mastery and the epitome of cool.  He was robbed of the chance to compete in Sarajevo, which is a shame, as he would've given the Mahres a run for the money in the slalom.

2. Marc Girardelli 
I place him higher than Maier due to his incredible consistency and versatility: started as a speed skier, then went tech after a knee injury and staged his comeback with a dominant run in slalom in 1984-85.  Had incredible technique and discipline, was on the forefront of many major technical developments in modern ski racing.

3. Hermann Maier
"Mr. Super-G" had nerves of steel and an incredible feel for the snow.  Could hack through in slalom, but was always a speed demon.  A lot of "what if?" factor with the motorcycle injury.  I rank him below Girardelli because he didn't have to reinvent his technique as much over his career.

4. Jean Claude Killy
The original superman on skis, and the first superpower of the FIS World Cup.

5. Gustavo Thoeni
The dominant player, other than Stenmark, in the 1970s ski racing scene.  Calculated aggression with a bit more flair and gusto than Stenmark made Thoeni a bit less consistent but a lot more versatile.

6. Alberto Tomba
Showed that a big guy can ski the disco slalom as well as the nimble "stick figures."  Had an incredible snow feel, probably would've been a dominant super-G skier had he chosen to compete in said event beyond the 1988 season.  Probably the most dominant tech skier behind Stenmark.

7. Pirmin Zurbriggen
Overall consistency and workmanlike discipline brought a lot of success to Zubi, but he always lived somewhat in the shadow of his peers, Tomba and Girardelli.  But was a legitimate threat in any race he entered, and had the mental game down pat.  His DH run at Calgary in 1988 was so "loose-yet-precise" that it could be used as a textbook example of the discipline for years after.

8. Lasse Kjus
Norway's best: consistent, aggressive, media savvy and one of the "nice guys" of the tour.  Had a much longer career than many of his peers, and it helped that he had Aamodt as a training partner and rival from an early age.

9. Phil Mahre
Until the advent of Bode Miller, the best U.S. male to don a pair of boards.  Won overall World Cup titles, even after the advent of super-G and despite his refusal to race said event (he thought it was an unnecessary compromise to pander to the speed crowd).  Laid some of the groundwork for modern racing technique (e.g. the "White Pass turn").

10. Kjetil Andre Aamodt
See the entry on Kjus for the background here.

Honorable Mentions: Stephan Eberharter, Piero Gros, Günther Mader, Rudi Nierlich, Peter Müller, Rok Petrovic

Likely to Crack the Top 10 Upon Retirement (or force the expansion of the list to the top 15): Bode Miller, Aksel Lund Svindal, Benjamin Raich

If you want my quick rundown of the top women of the FIS World Cup era:

1. Annemarie Moser-Pröll
2. Janica Kostelic
3. Vreni Schneider
4. Rosi Mittermaier
5. Tamara McKinney
6. Nancy Greene
7. Petra Kronberger
8. Pernilla Wiberg
9. Erika Hess
10. Maria Walliser

Likely on the list after retirement: Lindsey Vonn, Anja Pårson

Great post, Songfta. Thanks for taking the time to write it. Maybe Girardelli should get extra points for putting up with his father for all of those years.

By the way, on the HM front, it sounds as if his knee surgery may not have worked out as hoped, and that it's not as stable as planned. I can't blame him one bit for putting and end to his career after what his body's been through. I haven't heard any confirmation, but it sounds like he got back on snow, the knee was problematic, and his quick decision and announcement followed.

A blue collar kinda guy who would not be denied.

Songfta, awesome post, thanks a lot for that. I've forgotten, what is your background again? You have some great info and insights into the Cup scene. Hope to hear more from you during the season.

From what I know, the only retired guy you have outside the Top 10 who might deserve a spot is Stephan Eberharter, who always struck me as better than people gave him credit for. He had a year or two when I don't think even a healthy Maier would have beat him in DH.

Interesting, too, your comments on Kjus, who's probably my favorite skier of the last 20 years or so. What do you mean by media savvy in his case? I really don't know much about him. Seems like he's doing quite well for himself in retirement, too.

Background: former ski racer for (Rowmark Ski Academy and Connecticut College - still occasionally dust off the boards for masters stuff, when time and budget permit), lifelong ski racing fan and relentless tech-head.  My coach and mentor there, Olle Larsson, really got me into studying the history of high-level racing and into really detailed technique analysis and diagnosis.  One of my other coaches there, Marjan Cernigoj, taught me a lot about finding speed, and he still coaches on the international level (currently the head coach of the Slovenian Ski Team).

(If you know Olle, he's retiring after the upcoming season - inevitable, kinda sad, but good that he'll finally get some time for himself and his family.)

Basically: I blame ski racing for making me the ski addict I am today. 

Agreed on Eberharter: underrated and truly a master of the speed events.  Walchhofer is up there in that regard, as well, as were Peter Müller and Franz Klammer - though the last two were one-discipline specialists.

Regarding Kjus' "media savvy" angle: he was one of the first racers to realize the value of working with the press and giving back to the industry via his clothing company.  He was one of the first racers to realize the power of the internet in terms of self-marketing, and was always quite open with reporters before and after races.  I think he really understood that, while all press is good in terms of getting our name out there, getting good press worked far, far better.