Their Success Is All in the Family

By Tom Callahan

We ve spent the major part of our lives in the snow The thought of Americans at the top of the mountain is still heady and strange. Alpine skiing is baseball to the Swiss, the Scandinavians and the Liechtensteiners. In the U.S., it is barely lacrosse. Skiing is not a necessity in Lexington, Ky., but the reigning women's overall World Cup champion, Tamara McKinney, is from there. For three years, Phil Mahre of Yakima, Wash., has been the men's overall World Cup king, and his twin, Steve, holds the World Championship gold medal in the giant slalom. Skiers have been spotted in the Cascades before, but none like the Mahres (pronounced mares), who are leading the most promising U.S. team in history to the Winter Olympics in Sarajevo.

At Lake Placid, N.Y., four years ago, Phil took a silver medal in the slalom, just the third Alpine medal collected by an American male in ten Games over 44 years; none has ever won a gold. In 1980 he finished behind the regal Swede Ingemar Stenmark, who also won the giant slalom. Slaloming is weaving through a course described by slender flagpoles. The giant slalom combines all this sideways whooshing with the third Alpine skiing discipline, downhill racing. While Phil also braves the downhill, he has basically followed the concentrated swerves of Stenmark, who has made slalom skiing more than just a specialty.

To understand Phil Mahre and his chances, one must consider Stenmark, who at 27, not far from the peak of his game, has been banned from Sarajevo for having the bad taste not to cover up his amateur income. For him, ski racing has always been a cold business. Since moving to untaxing Monaco four years ago and taking out a commercial license, he has profited by millions at the cost of his Olympic eligibility.

A dozen years ago, the late Olympic blunderbuss Avery Brundage took such umbrage at the profit motives of skiers like Austrian Karl Schranz that he contemplated downgrading the Games' skiing events to mere world championships.

Brundage might barely have tolerated Phil Mahre, 26, who probably makes no more than a six-figure living, legally laundered through the U.S. ski team. Neither money nor celebrity inordinately concerns him. As for gold medals, he says, "I don't know. It's every ski racer's goal. It would be exciting to win one. But I can live without it. To me, walking in the opening ceremonies is the essence of the Olympics. Winning the gold or making a lot of money is not the reason I am in the sport."

Expectations around the Americans have changed. In Europe, no longer are they regarded as just "those nice kids from the U.S." At home, they are the favorites. "Everyone gets involved in an Olympic year," Mahre says with a touch of vinegar, "but we do this year in and year out. The suddenness of the interest is always a little annoying, and all these expectations are not too enjoyable."

He has always skied for no other reason than "the fun of it." His father was encouraging but not insistent. Dave Mahre sadly quit apple growing 22 years ago and took a job managing a ski area in order to support his burgeoning family, which numbers nine children. The Mahre kids were customarily dressed from the lost-and-found at the White Pass lodge, but the scenery was rich. Although school was an hour and a half away, the ski lift was just outside the door. "We finished our homework on the bus," Phil says, "and were off skiing and hiking as soon as we got home. We've spent the major part of our lives in the snow." By the age of nine, the twins were the joint terrors of the Buddy Werner League races, the local punt, pass and schuss contest. Exactly when Phil slid slightly ahead is unclear, but Steve imagines it was at the starting line. "I was born four minutes later," he says, "and I've been trying to catch up ever since."

As sibling rivalries go, theirs is peaceful. In 1981, when Steve momentarily skied away with the points that would have clinched Phil's first World Cup, their smiles stayed intact. On the last day of the season, Phil prevailed. When one breaks a bone, the other does not say ouch. But Steve says, "It really is like he's a part of me. At the Lake Placid Olympics, I ended up falling, but knowing that he was ahead after the first run made me feel great, almost as if it were me."

A skier's closest relationship is with the mountain. "I love to be on the hill in the morning when it's still dark," Phil says, "to make three or four runs just waiting for the sun to come up." Because of a bleak December and dismal snow in Europe, the brothers came home early from the World Cup tour to Yakima for practice over Christmas. So far, their best finishes have been a third for Steve and a ninth for Phil, who says, "It's funny sometimes how quickly everything can just click in. When everything's going right, it's like a joy ride."

Tamara McKinney started the new season better, with a second-place slalom finish to Erika Hess of Switzerland, but she has yet to reach 1983 form. Christin Cooper, 24, who wrecked a knee during a training run a year ago, has recovered her health and exuberance: "When you can take off and go where you want, you can go through trees. It's magic." Last season had been forecast as a watershed year for Coor per, but it was McKinney who made history. During 16 years of World Cup competition, only twice before had one country swept the overall titles, and no American woman had ever won. McKinney beat Hanni Wenzel. In all the Olympics, U.S. women Alpine skiers have gathered twelve medals, with Gretchen Fraser (1948), Andrea Mead Lawrence (1952) and Barbara Ann Cochran (1972) earning gold.

Sired by a Hall of Fame steeplechase jockey, McKinney was raised on a horse farm but bred to be a ski racer by her stage mother Frances, who rented a winter house near Squaw Valley, Calif. "I remember wearing baby skis," says Tamara, the youngest and the second most promising of Frances McKinney's seven children, five of whom reached the U.S. ski team. Sheila, 25, the family's particular star, made the team at the unlikely age of twelve. But in 1977 she fell in a downhill run and was unconscious for a month. After relearning how to talk, walk and write, Sheila could possibly have skied on, but her taste for it was gone. "Mom's dis appointed that I'm not enthusiastic about racing any more," Sheila said a few years later. "She doesn't quite understand." A half brother, Steve, 30, turned to daredevil speed skiing (he once held the world's record of 124 m.p.h.) after an advertising transaction disqualified him from amateur competition. All family dreams were eventually handed down to Tamara. "I am out there trying to win, but I'm mostly trying to stay happy," she says, seeming even younger than 21. "When racing, I feel confident of every tenth of a second, of every curve and every rise."

At 5 ft. 4 in., 117 Ibs., McKinney hardly cuts the blocky figure of a woman skier. Actually, the entire women's team appears less robust than its regimen. At various boot camps from Hawaii to New Zealand, karate and pro football have been mixed into the exercises (Green Bay Packer Del Rodgers was a drill instructor). With the exception of three-time Olympian Cindy Nelson, a bronze-medal winner in 1976, they are extraordinarily fit. Nelson crashed a gate at Val d'Isere, France, last month and tore the ligaments in a knee. She returned to the U.S. immediately and has been working furiously to recover.

"Cindy knew every slope in Europe, says McKinney. "Her absence has hit us all pretty hard." The team's usual manner is joking and sometimes even throwing confetti. "The Europeans used to laugh at our crazy spirit," Cooper says, "but now that we've started winning, it drives them up a wall."

Nelson still hopes to be ready hi two weeks. "You have to be healthy and lucky," says Phil Mahre, who is near the end. "This is my last year. I'll still be connected with skiing, but I'd like to venture out and try something else." He expects to miss the excitement at the starting gate, the camaraderie hi the finish area and "even getting up at 6 o'clock in the morning." McKinney says, "It can't come together and it can't be good unless you're having a good time of it. I have to take a step back, breathe, have fun and do my best." Her success last year is sometimes a burden. "It's almost easier to get a little confidence in yourself quietly," she says. For the U.S. skiers, those days are over. --By Tom Callahan. Reported by Gary Lee with the U.S. women's ski team

With reporting by Gary Lee