Of the many heroes at the 1968 Win ter Olympics, the man who stands above all is a moody, onetime consumptive who complains of a nervous stomach and insomnia, and likes to talk in par ables. "When I was a child," says Jean-Claude Killy, 24, who last week swept three gold medals in Alpine skiing, "I had a friend named Gérard d'Agallier.
He was always the fastest, but he never really believed in skiing; he never thought it could be a whole life. And where is Gérard now? Down in the val ley somewhere, driving a truck."
Skiing has been Killy's life ever since his father, descendant of an Irish mercenary who fought for Napoleon (the family name originally was Kelly), opted for the quiet life in 1946 and moved his family from Paris to Val d'Isere, 6,037 ft. up in the French Alps. Jean-Claude was then three; within a year, he was a familiar figure, with baggy pants and a runny nose, on the slopes outside town. "I would carry my skis to school and rest them against the wall so I could ski at lunchtime," he says. "On Thursday mornings, when we were all supposed to go to catechism, we would go skiing instead. The priest would ski out after us. He was a wonderful sight, in his full robes, as he chased us down the mountain."
Quite Mad. By the time Killy was eight, he had won his first competition — a jumping contest. A bout with tuberculosis sent him to a sanatorium for four months, but by 14, he was promising enough to be picked for the French team that competed in a junior meet at Cortina d'Ampezzo in Italy. He fell in the slalom at Cortina and suffered the first of two broken legs. "I was quite mad when I was young," he says. "I took too many chances." But he was also learning — developing the power, control and techniques that would make him a world champion by 1966.
Power? Killy's start as so explosive that he once burst right out of his bindings. Control? "This is a sport of millimeters," he says. "Sometimes it's worth it to take risks, but sometimes it costs you more than you gain. For example, if you have three turns followed by a right angle at the end, the ideal thing to do is to take the three turns as fast as you can and still make the right angle tightly. But sometimes you are better off taking the first three turns more easily so that you can take the last one very well. You can lose a whole second in one single turn. That is something most skiers still don't know."
Killy's technical superiority starts with his fanatical attention to detail. His bindings must be adjusted just so: feet straightaway for a downhill race, but slightly pigeon-toed for the slaloms —so that he can get more "heel thrust" and acceleration. His choice of skis varies according to the kind of race and snow conditions; he has been known to switch skis between the two runs of a slalom race—a practice followed by few of his competitors.