Giant in the Slalom

He carves the slope with a surgeon's precision, hugging the fall line, darting through slalom gates with eyeblink speed. Down below they call him "the silent Swede," but up here Ingemar Stenmark is eloquent, communicating easily with the mountain. He knows what it will give him and what he must give in return. In his powdery wake, he leaves competitors a curt challenge: "I set the pace, and now you guys beat me."

Unless fate or a dark horse intervenes, Stenmark should leave Lake Placid with one gold medal, and possibly two. In his specialty, the giant slalom (a zigzag race through 30 or more gates), he is virtually unbeatable. In 1978-79, he won this race all ten times it was staged in World Cup competition; this season he is three for three. In the slalom (a shorter, steeper course with more gates and sharper turns), his win rate approaches 50%. Says Phil Mahre, his friend and rival: "He is really a fantastic skier, especially on a steep course. He changes edges like nobody else."

Stenmark, 23, is something of a skiing oddity, a man from a Nordic country who excels in alpine events and regularly beats the Germans, Austrians, Swiss, Italians and Frenchmen, who have long dominated downhill skiing. He grew up in tiny Tarnaby (pop. 600), just 50 miles south of the Arctic Circle, and learned to ski on the gentle slope behind his home. Tutored by a father who was a devotee of skiing, Stenmark was Ingemar Stenmark preps for the Olympics at a World Cup race in France a budding virtuoso by

13. Recalls Hermann Nogler, his trainer: "I watched him

for a week, and I said to myself, 'That boy will be a world

champion.' You could see the natural talent, the single-mindedness, the way he was hard on himself."

Stenmark joined the European racing circuit in 1974, when he was 17. The following year he blossomed. He was the World Cup leader in the slalom and giant slalom, and was in contention for the combined championship (slalom, giant slalom and downhill) until the final day of the season at Val Gardena, Italy, when he lost to Italian Gustavo Thoeni in a dramatic, head-to-head slalom. In 1976, he became the first Scandinavian to win the World Cup, and he was again champion in 1977 and 1978.

Last season he captured a record 14 races, two more than France's Jean-Claude Killy did in 1967. Even with that showing, Stenmark finished only fifth in the overall standings. He was penalized by a rule change that made it exceedingly difficult to win the Cup without scoring in the downhill, an event he shuns. Despite this self-imposed handicap, he leads in total points for this year's World Cup. Says he: "I just do not have time to train well enough for the downhill without cutting into the time I find necessary for the slalom and giant slalom." Adds Mahre: "Ingemar is a very precise man, a high-precision skier, and the slaloms are precise and perfectible. The downhill is just a matter of going fast."

Stenmark's technique is spare and tightly controlled, quite unlike the hellbent, hurtling style of a Killy. In the early days of slalom competition, skiers navigated the gates with looping S-turns. Later they flattened out the S-turns and substituted rapid-fire slashes, often brushing the poles. The Swede has achieved further refinements, reducing the slashes to mere flickers of shifting body weight. He owes much of his letter-perfect form to exceptional physical gifts. "He has tremendous balance, great agility, a good eye and fantastic concentration," says former U.S. Alpine Team Director Hank Tauber. "He has what makes great champions: he can do it over and over again."

In Sweden, Stenmark is a national hero on a par with Tennis Professional Bjorn Borg. With his freckles and curly hair, Ingemar has an appealing, boyish look that should

make him the darling of the European sporting press. To the chagrin of journalists, however, he is taciturn, bordering on withdrawn. "Sometimes the whole business is too much for me," he admits. "Only skiing calms me."

Says Nogler, "You must remember that he comes from a quiet place with a natural rhythm. He is still getting used to the new milieu."

Stenmark was a desultory student, and even today his reading rarely goes beyond the nearest sports page.

Adds his trainer: "He does not smoke, drink, dance, womanize--in short, he has no private life."

Europe's premiere skiers will be gunning for the graceful Swede at Lake Placid. His chief competition figures to come from Andreas Wenzel, 21, of Liechtenstein, who stands second in World Cup points this year. Others to be watched, in addition to America's Mahre, are three swift Swiss: Jacques Luethy, Peter Mueller and Peter Luescher, who won the World Cup last year. Wenzel's sister Hanni, 23, the current World Cup leader, is heavily favored in the women's slaloms She will be tested by Annemarie Moser-Proell, 26, who won two silver medals at Sapporo in 1972, and France's Perrine Pelen, 19.

Stenmark's preparations for the Olympics were derailed last September when he took a hair-raising spill at Val di Senales, Italy, while practicing the downhill, of all things. He suffered a brain concussion and was unable to resume snow training for several weeks. "I've never before started so late in the year," says he, "but I'm not worried." But after his disappointing performance at Innsbruck in 1976--he managed only a bronze in the giant slalom--Stenmark is wary of making medal predictions. "The margins of victory are so small and accidental occurrences so often decisive," he says. "If only I get one Olympic gold medal, I'll be happy."

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