Aamodt joins the all-time greats of skiing
(China Daily)
Updated: 2006-02-20 06:54

SESTRIERE, Italy: He may not have the glamour of Jean-Claude Killy nor the charisma of Franz Klammer, but Kjetil Andre Aamodt has earned his place among the all-time greats of skiing.

It was appropriate then that the Norwegian received his Olympics super-G gold medal Saturday from the hands of another skiing legend, Austrian Tony Sailer.

Aamodt's domination of Austrian giant Hermann Maier gave the stocky 34-year-old his third Olympic title in the discipline, his fourth overall, and took his record medals tally at the Olympics to eight from a total of five Games.

"He was really happy for me," said Aamodt of Sailer. "I have a lot of respect for him as I do for the other big champions of alpine, such as Killy, (Ingemar) Stenmark and Hermann (Maier) here."

Aamodt's first Games were in 1992, only a year after he had taken a super-G silver medal at the world championships in his first year as a senior.

At Albertville, Aamodt showed some of the grit which was to define his career when he became Norway's first Olympic alpine medallist in 40 years.

This despite having to be drip-fed less than two months earlier because of a bout of mononucleosis. He also took a bronze in the giant to show his performance was no fluke.

A sterling career followed, and Aamodt took a further three Olympic medals two years later in Lillehammer.

In front of 30,000 screaming fans, he famously lost the downhill gold to American Tommy Moe by only four hundredths of a second but walked off with a bronze in the super-G and a silver in the combined.

That year, he was also crowned the World Cup overall champion.

Four years later in Nagano, where Maier entered the Olympic fray, Aamodt missed out on the medals coming fifth in the super-G and 13th in the downhill.

He struggled with injuries after the Nagano Games, but by 2002 - the year in which he became runner-up in the overall World Cup for the fifth time - he was back.

Aamodt beat Austrians Stephan Eberharter and Andreas Schifferer to the gold to win his second super-G crown, and dominated young American upstart Bode Miller to win the combined.

Since Salt Lake City in 2002, Aamodt has only stepped on to the World Cup circuit's podium seven times, and his last victory goes back to nearly three years ago when he won the Wengen combined.

This season though, as the Games approached, Aamodt's motivation was intact - as proven by his third place in the super-G at Garmisch in January.

"This season I skied very well," he said. "I've been in the top eight for all the events."

As for the future, the Monaco resident, who hails originally from Oslo, is keeping his cards close to his chest. If he can maintain the motivation, Aamodt may be around for a while yet.

"The challenge is to keep the motivation going during the tough training periods. I think I've skied in 140 World Cup races and every year is like a circus, the same thing," he said. "Now, I get a little bit sick when I see a downhill course. But the feeling you get when you finish a race is something special and something you want to feel again.

"That is why I want to continue."

(China Daily 02/20/2006 page5)