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Zurbriggen's personality -- "if any," one frustrated journalist mutters unjustly -- does not always sit well with his teammates, and Muller, normally an easygoing fellow, has grumbled that the all-event marvel gets too much attention. Now he merely grunts when asked about Zurbriggen. Coach Frehsner, in turn, grunts when asked about relations between the two racers. "Muller," he says, making the name a complete sentence. But he is smiling, and why not? A grouchy Muller may ski faster. Zurbriggen, of course, will be unaffected.
There is much talk among racers that downhill courses have become too easy, with lumps smoothed by bulldozers and snow sprayed on flawlessly by machines. Thus you don't really have to ski anymore, this line of argument goes, and anyone with a magical pair of skis has a huge advantage. It is true that ski manufacture is as much black art as high tech, and no factory seems able to produce two pairs of skis that are identical. It is also true that the stars to whom the ski firms pay huge sums, over the table and under, get the best skis and the cleverest ski preparers.
Yes. But no. You still have to ski. Here we are at Val Gardena, on the last day of downhill practice. Our perch is a snowbank in chill shadow, with a view of the Camel Bumps. These are three rolling hillocks that will loosen your fillings. A racer sights the first at about 70 m.p.h., then improvises. The wrong way is to hit the top of each, arms and legs splayed, losing speed from wind drag, perhaps crashing. The bold way is to jump before the first, absorbing it without catching air, then -- no time to correct -- launch a mighty jump from the uphill side of the second bump a full 130 ft. to the backside of the third. Several skiers among the world's best try this and simply cannot spring far enough. They hit the top of the third bump and splatter. Here comes Canada's Boyd: he heaves off bump two, going so fast that his body makes the air hum, rising two feet higher than the rest, landing perfectly. Then Zurbriggen: his jump is low, but his tuck is exact. He just makes the downslope of bump three. But he was in the air for less time than Boyd; through this stretch he was faster.
Now -- what's this -- comes a trickster who does not jump at all; he slithers around the bumps to the far side. If this were not Girardelli, onlookers would laugh. But in yesterday's practice, following his own eccentric line, Girardelli was first. He is burly, midsize, quick of mind and movement, impassive. He has always gone his own way; when he was a teenager, and an Austrian, he and his father decided that the Austrian ski hierarchy was slighting him. He became a Luxembourger. With his father as his coach, setting up his own slalom poles because he had no team support, he went on to win the World Cup in 1985 and '86. Zurbriggen was second. Last year, with a shoulder dislocated in the year's first race, he was second, Zurbriggen first. And Wasmeier third, as he had been the year before. These three, really, are the only world-class all-event men on the tour. Usually an all-eventer wins the overall World Cup with solid points in each discipline. This season, though, a 21-year-old Italian fireball named Alberto Tomba has emerged in a blare of angelic trumpets to win four slalom and three GS races. For most of the season, he led in Cup points on the strength of his specialties.