For Purple Mountains' Majesty

By Tom Callahan

Mahre wins third World Cup; McKinney nears a U.S. sweep

No American ski racer had ever won a World Cup until Phil Mahre won three. On consecutive snowy days last week, he beat Sweden's Ingemar Stenmark and everyone else to the bottom of Colorado cliffs in Aspen and Vail, ensuring his third straight championship. "Europeans aren't such great travelers," Mahre said compassionately. "They miss their mountains." Stenmark misses his World Cups. "I'm disappointed," said the former king of the hill, winner of three overall titles before Mahre. "I think I can never win the World Cup again." So Mahre's dominance is complete.

So is America's, as Tamara McKinney, 20, virtually clinched the women's overall championship, a first for the U.S. "I still can't believe it, but it feels great," said McKinney. "I was a little nervous about the race today. I just let the skis run." When Switzerland's Erika Hess, the defending champion, fell at a gate last week, McKinney moved up from third place, past Hess and Hanni Wenzel of Liechtenstein. Then, summoning what she called "the best ski days of my career," Tamara won two giant slaloms in Waterville Valley, N.H., her fourth and fifth victories of the winter. "I took some chances," she said, "and just let it all out."

Mahre, until last week, had not won a race all season, though his showings in each of the three skiing disciplines-slalom, giant slalom and downhill--added up to the leading point total for the four-month series. Winning his two giant slaloms pleased him more than clinching the Cup. "I don't know, individual races just mean more to me," he said. "You don't think of the Cup until afterward. The races are the fun of it, and I ski for the fun of it."

Considering that his domain is a collection of play villages built on the order of cuckoo clocks, Mahre seems wondrously down to earth. His celebrity in Europe is such that, when the greatest skier in the world comes home to the U.S., he enjoys being ignored. "I don't think there are many Americans who understand what I've done," Mahre said. "That's unfortunate for skiing but nice for me. I'm not one for fame and fortune." He does not strike himself as being that phenomenal. "I grew up in the snow," he said with a shrug, the Cascades of Washington, "where skiing was just something children did after school," especially the nine Mahre children.

Their father, Dave Mahre, mountain manager of the ski area at White Pass, gave each child a set of skis and a sense of adventure. Last year the news of Phil's second World Cup reached his father by shortwave radio as Mahre, 55, dangled from a rope on the side of Mount Everest. "Fortunately," Phil continued, "I was gifted, and I also had a twin brother who pushed me in the sense that I always wanted to beat him. And yet, at the same time, his victories were sort of my victories too. It's hard to explain."

Steve Mahre finished third behind Phil and Stenmark in the World Cup standings last year. Hindered by a shoulder injury this season, he stood ninth last week. Having followed four minutes behind his brother 25 years ago, Steve says good-naturedly, "I've been trying to catch up ever since." It delights him to have closed the gap to less than a second down a crooked mile.

They are nearly identical in ways more profound than toothy smiles and thinning hair. Each has an infant daughter and a desire to get back to the Cascades. "The travel is no longer so enjoyable," said Phil, "and the circuit is no place to raise a family. I'll take the summer off and see how I feel after that. But next year I might just pick and choose my races."

The Olympic Games are sure to beckon him to Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, next February, but for now the call is muffled, perhaps only by distance. "I don't really have any goals, other than to enjoy myself," Mahre said. "If you go to the Olympics, you have to be healthy and lucky that day." At Lake Placid in 1980, he took second in the slalom to Stenmark, whose Olympic eligibility probably ended three years ago when he shifted his residence to the less taxing principality of Monaco and took out a license to sell himself commercially at seven figures. Adhering to the amateur rules, Mahre probably makes no more than a few hundred thousand dollars. "If I'm third at the Olympics, and I enjoy myself," he said, "that's great."

Concerning finances, he is forthright. It is hard to find pictures of the Mahres, or any skier for that matter, without skis propped over their hearts, brand names out. When Phil was asked if he intended to go on and wind up the season this week in Japan, he replied, "Sure, if not for myself, for my companies."

Billy Kidd, the pre-eminent U.S. skier of the '60s, stood off to the side at Mahre's Aspen victory, marveling, actually chuckling, over how relatively little Mahre appears to value the usual rewards. "Recognition, money, history books," Kidd said, "he doesn't care much about any of that. Only about having fun. He's serious, of course, but not intense. It's incredible that he's this way and this good. Above all, he's an unbelievable athlete."

As a high school football player, Mahre enjoyed the crashes. On the night before the last race of the 1981 World Cup, when he had to finish among the top three to become America's first champion, Mahre played three hours of basketball despite friends' hysterical warnings. No ski coach has ever been able to dissuade either Mahre brother from motocross racing in the offseason. "A lot of people say I'm crazy," Phil said, "but I think all these things are games, and games are for fun."

A lesser athlete could not make the turns he does; one with less joy for sport would likely never try. Mahre cuts his own ruts in the snow, and those who follow his tracks are apt not to finish the course. McKinney's style is frequently described as dainty. It is said that she skips down the mountain; her skis "kiss the snow." Many of the women racers are rather robust, but McKinney, at 5 ft. 4 in., 115 Ibs., is as light as a scarf. The seventh and youngest child of Hall of Fame Steeplechase Jockey Rigan McKinney, and an equestrian herself, Tamara appreciates speed no less than most children of the Kentucky bluegrass, and no less than Mahre. "In the next few years," Mahre said, "skiing might not be such a bad sport for an American who wants to be famous."

In the meantime, Americans present for this pair's remarkable history were counted in the hundreds, not thousands. In Aspen many shouted their support for Mahre from chair lifts as they floated overhead toward their own peaks. The slopes adjoining the course were streaked with skiers of all levels of ability paying no attention. After the race, Mahre and Stenmark stood together for a time at the base of the mountain, still panting from their runs, Mahre bareheaded, Stenmark wearing an elfin cap topped by a ball of yarn. The ball bounced about slowly as the man who has won the most World Cup races of all shook his head, and then he shook Mahre's hand. Later, asked how he would celebrate, Mahre said, "Oh, I don't know, with a chocolate chip cookie maybe." --By Tom Callahan This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.