SNOW Alps 25-26 web - Flipbook - Page 114
PHOTO COURTESY OF TONI SAILER
LAST RUN
Cortina Flashback
Toni Sailer, The Blitz from Kitz
by LESLIE WOIT
D
ateline Cortina Olympics, 1956. Fur coats, woolen
sweaters, slim pants – the atmosphere in the Dolomites
was pure Fellini. And at the center of it all was a young
Austrian with film-star looks and speed that defied physics.
At just 20, Toni Sailer became the first skier ever to win three
alpine gold medals in a single Olympic Games.
“I skied down the hill the way I wanted to ski. It’s the secret
for doing something big,” Toni told me years later, as we sat in
the salon of the elegant chalet he built in Kitzbühel. “You won’t
win a poker game if you’re not relaxed and ready to lose.”
At Cortina, his hell-for-leather wedeln technique didn’t just
win him the downhill, giant slalom, and the slalom, he owned
them, winning by margins that left rivals slack-jawed, including
a staggering 6.2 seconds in the GS. It was the first Olympics to
be broadcast live on television and, even though there were
only three TV sets in Kitzbühel, Toni’s dark shock of hair and
sexy smile stormed the globe like a blizzard. They called him
The Blitz from Kitz.
More than a skier, he was a new kind of star. But perfection
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is a dangerous standard. More golds on the circuit would follow
and when, inevitably, he finally came second in a slalom, fans
reacted as if a god had fallen. “For them,” he told me quietly,
“second was failure.”
Toni’s life was as cinematic as his skiing. After a stellar
handful of years of World Cup domination, and a track record
that tallied some 170 major victories, he hung up his race skis at
just 23. He went on to star in 25 German-language films — many
breezy alpine comedies — and recorded a dozen albums. Tall,
bronzed, slayingly handsome, he traveled effortlessly between
movie sets and mountain summits. For a quarter century, he
ran the successful Kitzbühel Red Devil Ski School and served
as Hahnenkamm Chief of Race for 20 years.
“I never had pressure in ski racing. I made all the decisions
myself,” he explained. “You can’t ski better whether it’s for one
million or two million. For me it was never work, it was always
beautiful, it was my life. Im Zwiefel nie.”
Never in doubt, the enduring charm of the Blitz from Kitz.
