N.Z. ski-ing champion a frustrated spectator

Press, 12 September 1987, Page 92

N.Z. ski-ing champion a frustrated spectator

By

TIMOTHY DUNBAR

Markus Hubrich, five times the New Zealand <meh’s skl-ing champion, will be a frustrated spectator while the Bolle national championships are being contested at Whakapapa. Hubrich, recuperating from a kidney operaton, said he would just be supporting his fellow national team members at the championships, which begin on the Mount Ruapehu ski-field tomorrow.

The 24-year-old skier had the surgery in the United States at the end of May and has not been on the snow since.

Still optimistic about making the Winter Olympics in Calgary, Canada, in February, Hubrich has wisely resisted the temptation to put his skis back on too soon and do himself more damage.

He believes the kink discovered in his kidney might well lie behind the back problems which had been plaguing him. Since arriving back in New Zealand from his United Sttes base in Cincinnati three week£ ago

Hubrich has been living in Auckland and following what he described as a “vigorous, intensive physical therapy programme.” He is making steady progress, but wants to be 100 per cent fit before ski-ing again. As well as doing basic exercises Hubrich has been trying a little running and a lot of swimming, developing an aversion to chlorine as a result. “I feel like I’m training for the Summer Olympics, not the Winter Olympics,” he said yesterday.

After missing a large part of the European season through his back injuries and possibly all the New Zealand one Hubrich said the experience was depressing and frustrating. “But competitive sport is 80 per cent mental attitude and that’s what keeps me in there.” No doubt the feeling will be worse while he watches his team-mates speed through gates next week.

“I’m hungry to get back on snow,” Hubrich said. “I almost feel like having slalom poles for breakfast

daily.” Hubrich competed at the 1984 Sarajevo Winter Olympics, his fourteenth place in slalom being the best attained by a New Zealand skier at an Olympic Games. He would dearly like to be at Calgary, too. On the slopes of Coronet Peak last year Hubrich’s five-year reign as New Zealand ski-ing champion ended with Simon Wi Rutene taking the combined. But Hubrich would have been defending his national slalom title at Whakapapa.

The Canterbury team flew out of Christchurch yesterday morning for Mount Ruapehu, where ski-ing conditions are reported to be excellent with 30cm of new snow.

A Whakapapa spokesman and organising committee member, Scott Lee, said that four groomers had been working fulltime for three days to prepare the slopes.

A field of 65 men and 35 women has entered the championships which begin with the Bolle giant slalom tomorrow and are scheduled to end with the

Bolle slalom on Tuesday. Also slotted into the race week programme are the Haensli giant slalom on Monday and the Steinlager slalom on Wednesday.

Wi Rutene, from Rotorua, will be defending his title on his home ground, though he has been based in Queenstown for most of the last two domestic winters.

The battle for the women’s titles should be a little more interesting and the three times national champion, Kate Rattray, who has a Queenstown base but retains a Canterbury allegiance, will not have things easy. Pushing her hard in the giant slalom could be such skiers as Jane Blair, a remarkably talented 15-year-old from Queenstown, and Canterbury’s Juliet Satterthwaite while the Coberger sisters, Annelise and Adele, both from Canterbury, should help to ensure that the slalom is no shoo-in either. After the national championships the New Zealand Ski Association will be announcing, its Olympic squad. j