Like most kids, I had my share of sports heroes. Juan Marichal, Willie Mays, Willie McCovey and Carl Yastrzemski in baseball. Daryle “The Mad Bomber” Lamonica, Big Ben Davidson, Fred Biletnikoff and Gale Sayers in football, Walt “Clyde” Frazier, Julius “Dr. J” Erving, Dollar Bill Bradley and Willis Reed in basketball, and Eddie Giacomin, Jean Ratelle and Brad Park in hockey. I adored the incomparable Pele and Eusébio — the Black Panther! — in soccer, Cassius Clay/Muhammad Ali and Smokin’ Joe Frazier (it’s complicated), and a slew of Olympic medalists, from decathlete Rafer Johnson to sprinters John Carlos and Tommy Smith.
Skiing offered the same treasure trove of spectacular athletes for a youngster growing up in northeast New Jersey in the 1960s and ’70s. Initially, that meant racers, because those guys were beyond cool. The first “ski racers” I was aware of were Billy Kidd and the tragic Spider Sabich, who benefitted from ABC’s “Wide World of Sports” streaming into our family room every weekend. The first Winter Olympics I recall were the 1964 Games, where Kidd and Jimmy Heuga won silver and bronze, respectively, in the slalom.
But the first racer who truly captured my imagination, and the imagination of my ski-loving family, was France’s Jean-Claude Killy. There’s no question in my mind that part of the attraction is that my mom would practically swoon every time Jean-Claude was on the screen, his smooth French accent giving the sport an exotic flair. At the ripe age of 24, Killy did what many thought impossible, capturing gold in all three alpine disciplines — slalom, giant slalom and downhill — at the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble, France.
My brothers and I would line up chairs and stools along mom’s linoleum kitchen floor and “run the gates” in our stocking feet, pretending to be Killy. What I wasn’t able to express at the time, but was undoubtedly doing, is that I was learning from watching these athletes. I was practicing visualization long before I knew that was a thing. With women as well as men. Skiers like Barbara Cochran, Germany’s Rosi Mittemaier, Kidd and Killy, and later Sweden’s Ingemar Stenmark, Phil and Steve Mahre. All were fast. More importantly, they looked good going fast. And we all wanted to be fast and look good.