Encore Napoleon

In the windy hills, the Austrian com mander surveyed the landscape of de feat. "We may need two years to turn the tide," he said sadly. "They are so consistent."

One hundred and sixty-one years after Austerlitz, Napoleon had triumphed again. This time, the hills were the slopes of Franconia, N.H.; the contest was the North American Ski Championships; and the formidable enemy commander was France's Honore Bon net, 47, otherwise known as the Napoleon of the sport. "That can only be," disclaims the coach of the French ski team, "because I am not so tall and comb my hair to the front."

There are more compelling reasons.

At Franconia, Bonnet's troops were every bit as devastating as Napoleon I's. "Le Superman," Jean-Claude Killy, won everything in sight: the giant slalom, the slalom and the downhill, thereby clinching the 1967 World Cup. Behind him came Georges Mauduit, second in the giant slalom, and Guy Perillat, second in the downhill. In the women's events France's Isabelle Mir won the women's downhill, Christine Beranger the giant slalom, and Marielle Goitschel the slalom. Last week Bonnet took his forces on to Vail, Colo., for the American Internationals Team Race. The in evitable result: Killy repeated his triple triumph, and France won still another team championship.

Sand & Rectal Thermometers. The victories really belonged to Bonnet. And it was all the more remarkable because the twelfth child of an Alpine hotelkeeper was so late in showing an interest in the sport. He grew up determined to become a doctor; he never set foot on skis until World War II, when he divided his time between the air force and the maquisards--mountain-based Resistance fighters. While in uniform, he learned to ski so well that at war's end he was asked to take over training the army's Alpine ski troops. There he stayed until 1959, when a desperate French ski federation tapped him to be coach of France's national team, which had not had a world championship in eleven years.

Bonnet had two main ideas for his team: exercise and the egg. Until then, the prevailing form featured a skis-together, head-up posture. Bonnet reasoned that I'oeuf, a little used, head-down, feet-apart crouch, would give less aerodynamic drag and a lower center of gravity, thus making a skier faster and less likely to fall. The trouble was that it required fantastic strength to hold the egg for any length of time. Le coach, therefore, put les skiers through an exhaustive and exhausting daily ritual of deep knee bends with 60-lb. sacks of sand on their shoulders, forced them to climb endless flights of stairs, descend innumerable mountains to strengthen thigh muscles. On the slopes, he was the original martinet: barking orders to assistants through a walkie-talkie, charting every speed-slowing bump or hollow, taking the temperature of the snow with a rectal thermometer to be certain that precisely the right amount of wax was on the skis.

But at night, after a grueling practice or competition, Bonnet could play the indulgent father. He permitted his athletes to blow off steam their own way: wine and brandy if they wanted it, no 11 p.m. bed checks, no angry admonitions if his skiers staged impromptu auto races around narrow Alpine roads. "I tremble at their taste for risk," he said, "but you can't expect someone who races down mountains at such speed to live the rest of the time like a bookworm."

Firm & Powdery. Bonnet's tactics started paying off almost immediately. In the 1960 Olympics, his unheralded team won one gold and two bronze medals. In the 1964 Olympics, they skied off with three gold and three silver medals. Since 1966, Bonnet's troops have dominated virtually every major competition. Before arriving in the U.S. for the championships at Franconia and Vail, they made a shambles or >.us year's season in Europe, winning every meet. Ahead for Napoleons legions lie the 1968 Olympics, and if past performance is any gauge, it will be encore une fois.

After that there will be nowhere to go but up--to Praloup, a winter sports station in France's southern Alps, where Bonnet says he will retire. His successor? Qui sail? And who cares? Bonnet has established French skiing on such a firm, powdery base that Wellington himself could not undo it.

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