Beaver Creek – Bode Miller says he’s struggling for motivation to defend his World Cup title and challenge for medals at the Turin Olympics. Benjamin Raich, the versatile Austrian who pushed Miller to the brink in the overall title chase last season, doesn’t understand.
“When you are racing in the World Cup, normally it would be no problem that you are motivated,” Raich said after Tuesday’s downhill training session on the Birds of Prey. “If you are not motivated, then you have the wrong job.”
But Raich’s superstar teammate, Hermann Maier, can empathize with the ambivalent American.
“Sometimes I have the same feeling,” Maier confessed.
Miller, Raich and Maier – the top three in the World Cup standings last season – have vastly different perspectives in the early days of a season that will peak with the Turin Winter Games, Feb. 10-26.
In his World Cup diary Tuesday in The Denver Post, Miller said he lacks intensity and focus, his motivation doesn’t seem clear or genuine, he nearly retired after last season and isn’t sure he can finish this one.
Raich is hungry, having finished in the World Cup’s top four three times without winning. He says he’s not even thinking about Turin, but Maier is.
“The focus for sure is more the Olympic Games, because I was there only one time, and that is not too much,” said Maier, a four-time World Cup overall winner.
Maier emerged from obscurity in 1998, running away with the World Cup and winning two gold medals at the Nagano Olympics. At the 1999 world championships here, the former bricklayer claimed gold medals in downhill and super-G in breathtaking battles with Norwegian Lasse Kjus.
Maier won two more medals at the 2001 worlds, but later that year his right leg was nearly severed in a motorcycle accident, preventing him from competing in the Salt Lake Olympics. During the Games he vacationed in Key West, Fla., and the Bahamas, making sure not to watch ski racing on television.
“It was the right decision for me, because I didn’t see skiing,” Maier said. “It was only ice hockey and curling. Curling for me (was) a little boring.”
Unable to race until January 2003, Maier considered quitting.
“I was skiing with pain and I had no fun,” said Maier, whose autobiography, “Hermann Maier: The Race of My Life,” will be released in December.
But Maier won the World Cup in 2004 and challenged for it last season. He claimed this season’s opening giant slalom in Soelden, Austria, a surprise because he said he believed his days of winning in GS were over. Miller had a huge advantage after the first run but Maier edged him by .07 of a second.
“Bode Miller had a big advantage there, so I was surprised to win,” said Maier, who turns 33 on Dec. 7. “It was the perfect start for me in the new season.”
If Maier is as successful in Turin as he was in Nagano, it figures to mean more to him.
“I was in perfect shape (in 1998), it was my first full season and a perfect season,” Maier said. “Now it’s a little bit different. I’ve won a lot of races, and the Olympic Games are much more (important) for me at the moment.”
Rahlves talks of retiring
Daron Rahlves, the winningest downhiller in U.S. history, said he probably will retire after the Olympics.
“I’m pretty sure, like a good 90 percent-plus, that this is it,” Rahlves said. “It’s such a great lifestyle, a great sport, but there is a lot more out there I’d like to do.”
