Don't Save Anything: The Uncollected Writings of James Salter(35)

“We can talk better at the bottom,” he said. He headed for the starting hut but I made one more attempt to engage him. How many times, I asked, had he skied this course? He thought for a moment.

“1952,” he said, “1953 . . .” “Not just the races. All the times. Counting practice.” “Those don’t matter,” he said. The starting hut has no floor; it’s set right on the snow. There is a railing down the middle to create a kind of waiting area on one side. Sailer glides around it and lines up in the gate. There he pauses and looks down the bleak, empty course. They have been working on it all week. Difficult to know what his thoughts are, his memories. He first won the race the year of his Olympic sweep when he won the downhill, normally a matter of hundredths, by 3.5 seconds, the slalom by 4 seconds, and the giant slalom by 6.2 seconds. It was the greatest individual performance ever. Nobody, one authority says, has ever come close to those time differences, especially in giant slalom, not even Stenmark. Killy won by razor-thin margins.

From the starting gate the course goes down sharply to a hard left turn that leads into an even steeper, narrower pitch, a breathtaker called the Mausefalle. After this is another, the Steilhang. Sailer stands with the tips of his skis hung out over nothing. My thoughts are close to panic. I feel as if we are about to step off a precipice.

Sailer turns his head and then offers something for the first time. “How are your edges?” he asks. “Sharp? Because it’s all ice here. If they’re not sharp, I don’t think you’re going to make it.” And he is off. I watch in disbelief as he makes one or two confident turns and goes out of sight to the left at the bottom. My own skis are rented. I push them out over the edge. I had pictured us skiing slowly down the side of the course, shadowing it leisurely. It isn’t going to be like that.

I push off. From the first moment it’s like a car without brakes. On the frozen surface my edges won’t hold. I try to turn, but the skis only clatter. Picking up speed, I can’t make the last turn, fall at the bottom, and get up quickly. Sailer is standing there at the top of the Mausfalle.

“The ice isn’t bad,” he comments as I reach him, “it’s grippy.” When he was racing they used to pre-jump here and go most of the way down in the air. Now they press, holding their skis on the ground and taking the air as it comes. At the bottom it flattens suddenly—it’s called a compression—driving the legs up into the body. There’s no time for recovery. Three quick turns lead into the Steilhang, more difficult still. These turns are very important, Sailer comments, you have to make them correctly to keep up maximum speed. I nod reluctantly.

On the Steilhang is something unexpected: Austrian ski troops at work grooming the course. They are under the supervision of Willy Schaeffler, a former United States ski team coach now in his sixties. I know Schaeffler and am relieved to see him.

“What are you doing here?” he asks. We’ve stopped there beside him. “Toni’s showing me the Hahnenkamm,” I say casually. “Him? He doesn’t know anything about the Hahnenkamm,” Schaeffler says, to my alarm. “He’s forgotten it all.” He laughs at his own joke. Sailer says nothing. After a moment, merely, “Let’s go.” He lets his skis run down the rest of the Steilhang, some twenty or thirty yards, onto a relatively flat road through the woods. It feels like we are going sixty miles an hour. We are probably doing twenty. The tension is beginning to ease, however. The top part is the hardest—perhaps we’re going to make it.

We come to another pitch, not so steep. It’s called the Alteschneise—the Old Cut—and is where Sailer fell in 1958. He points to the approximate spot. He hit a fast place or bump, he doesn’t know which—the course was narrower and rougher then and the skis just went out from under him.

Through the middle section it is relatively pleasant, the sort of terrain that lets you ski fast but doesn’t oblige you to. And it’s less icy. Wonderful skiing.

Ahead is the last big pitch at the Hausberg. It’s the final test of the race and has a brutal compression at the bottom, where many racers have fallen and more than a few have ended their careers. Just before reaching it we see someone else on the course, a stocky figure in a blue ski suit who is gazing down the mountain almost pensively. It’s the Austrian coach, Kahr, known as Downhill Charly—the Austrians have a proprietary feeling toward the event which they regard as their exclusive domain. Kahr and Sailer exchange a few quiet words like a couple of fishermen. The sun has just come up and is casting a shadow down at the bottom where, Kahr points out, the racers will be at their maximum speed, eighty-five or ninety miles an hour. One thing the two of them agree on: the snow is perfect. We go down the final steep pitch together. It’s challenging but fairly wide. There is room to turn, and the compression is nothing because we cross it at an angle and at reasonable speed. The long straightaway to the finish is like applause.

True to his word, in a little restaurant at the foot of the slope Sailer talks about racing, what it was to be a great racer, what it takes to win. There are things you can learn from the coaches and things you can’t learn. “Energy,” he says. “Will.”

We talk for half an hour. He seems very different here, almost amiable. He was the son of a roofer. He became a great champion, knew all the glamour, and now he is back in his hometown. They are cheering for others now. When he looks back on it, the races, the fame, the records that in all probability will never be equaled, when he looks back on all of that, what does he think of, I ask? He reflects for a moment.