By the time French skier Jean-Claude Killy arrived at the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble, he had already won consecutive World Cups in the previous two years and was in peak form. But, as he headed to the starting gate of the Olympic downhill, the 24-year-old Frenchman realized his competition skis were stripped of wax.
On a training run earlier, he'd grabbed the wrong pair. "I offered to hurry and wax them," recalls then French team trainer Rene Sulpice, 73, "but he just waved it off and said, 'We'll manage.'" That's when Killy's steely drive to be the bestwax or no waxkicked in. Blasting out of the gate onto an already cruddy, rutted slope, he opened the throttle and "fought like a devil," says Sulpice, streaking to gold a mere eight-hundredths of a second ahead of another French skier.
This was but a thrilling warm-up. Days later, he grabbed gold again, first in the giant slalom, then in the slalom, becoming the second man after Austria's Toni Sailer in 1956 to sweep three Alpine events.
He retired from skiing after Grenobleexcepting a brief comeback in 1973 to win the pro world titleand devoted himself to promoting sport, as a businessman and as a member of the International Olympic Committee. At home, he's worked tirelessly to develop his Savoyard region, most recently garnering the 2009 world championships for his hometown, Val d'Isre. Clearly, his drive to succeed didn't stop at the bottom of the slope. Says Sulpice: "You don't become a champion by accident."