#FRANZ KLAMMER OLYMPIC DOWNHILL RUN HOW TO#
#FRANZ KLAMMER OLYMPIC DOWNHILL RUN SERIES#

The coaches there said, 'Come with us, you're a pretty good skier.' I've been on the road ever since as a skier.''Īn actual job, he laughed. ''Out in the Northwest, nothing was happening for me, because 50 percent of the ski-racing people are from the East. ''I moved to Lake Placid in 1980 to get closer to the team,'' he said.

#FRANZ KLAMMER OLYMPIC DOWNHILL RUN HOW TO#

Luckily, somewhere, I learned how to turn.'' Then I was able to bomb the whole chairlift. ''I used to go to the top of the hill and bomb the old men, the ski instructors, going straight down. ''We moved to Boise, Idaho, where I learned to ski,'' he was saying now after last night's medal ceremony. He's off the wall he says things that probably grate people.''īill Johnson, who was born in Los Angeles, now lives in Van Nuys, Calif., with his father, whose business travels created the son's opportunity to be a skier. ''When your next home is your next hotel,'' Bill Marolt said of the team's travels, ''you tend to develop personality problems. Once he decided to be part of the team, he was fine.''īill Marolt also appeared to choose his words carefully in talking about the skier's reputation for not being popular with his teammates. Once in shape, you work on the mental aspect. ''He wasn't that disciplined at that time. ''He's like a lot of young people, they develop a certain life style,'' Bill Marolt said. When asked about his recent repartee with the Austrian and Swiss skiers, he smiled.īill Marolt hadn't taken any credit for what Bill Johnson had accomplished, saying, ''Anybody who doesn't give him credit for winning the gold medal is shortchanging him.'' And the Alpine director tried to minimize Bill Johnson's problems of 1981, when he was deleted from the team. In breaking the European monopoly on the Olympic men's downhill, Bill Johnson, 23 years old, may have done for American skiing what Francis Ouimet did for American golf when he won the 1913 United States Open in a playoff with Harry Vardon and Ted Ray, the two dominant Englishmen of that era.īut, with the gold medal around his neck after last night's presentation ceremony, Bill Johnson was not a diplomatic or gracious winner. ''Billy,'' said Bill Marolt, ''keeps his foot on the gas farther into the turn than anybody else.'' Foyt has won four Indianapolis 500 automobile races. ''If you can do it, it ain't bragging.''īill Johnson did it with speed, the way A. ''It's like Dizzy Dean used to say,'' Bill Marolt said.

#FRANZ KLAMMER OLYMPIC DOWNHILL RUN SERIES#

''I won,'' he said later, ''but I expected to win.''Įver since Bill Johnson arrived here, he had predicted that he would ''smoke these European guys.'' And he did, just as Joe Namath guaranteed the New York Jets' victory in Super Bowl III, just as Babe Ruth reputedly called a World Series home run, just as Muhammad Ali often named the round in which he would knock out an opponent.

Franz klammer olympic downhill run