Long wait for Germany

Press, 8 March 1989, Page 36

Long wait for Germany

German Ski-ing Association officials were as pleased as Punch with Hansjorg Tauscher and his gold medal at the recent world ski-ing championships in Vail, Colorado. It was 50 years since a German had last won the downhill world title. Hellmuth Lantscher won the major event in Alpine ski-ing in 1939. Half a century later Tauscher, aged 21, from Oberstdorf, Bavaria, the highest-altitude town in the Federal Republic of Germany, was shouldered by jubilant team-mates. He was a dark horse and no-one was more surprised than he was to win the world crown.

A police officer in his home town, Tauscher had performed well in several World Cup events this season, but no-one was expecting him to romp home in Colorado. Certainly not the defending champion, Peter Mueller from Switzerland, who was runner-up this time. “The way he takes the bends I can learn a thing or two from him,” Mueller ungrudgingly said of the new champion. Tauscher, a stonemason’s son who grew up in the shadow of the Oberstdorf ski jump, gave the credit to his backroom boys. “It wasn’t my best run but I had fast skis,” he said. Team-mates describe him as a tough and serious customer with a sense of humour. He has had his fair share of bad luck, fracturing three dorsal vertebrae at 18 and nearly ending in a wheel-

chair. He has a steel plate in one wrist and team doctors say one of his knees needs surgery. But right now he can bask in the glory of his world crown. For the German Ski-ing Association it went toward an unexpectedly good team rating at the world championships.

The German — or perhaps it would be fairer to say the Bavarian — team won four medals in Colorado, as against an expected two. Karin Dedler in the downhill and Michaele Gerg in the super giant slalom won bronze, Armin Bittner a silver in the men’s slalom. Ski-ing officials are not content to rest on their laurels. The German team manager said in Colorado that even greater attention was to be paid to talent-spotting and training talented youngsters. He did not want to have to wait another 50 years for gold in the men’s downhill event'