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Stephan Eberharter

Patience and determination are certainly two of the strongest qualities of Austria’s third Overall World Cup Champion – Stephan Eberharter, the Tyrolian from Stumm, who dominated the 2001/ 2002 season as only a few skiers before him.
A triple Olympic medal winner at Salt Lake City including a gold in giant slalom in his last Olympic race in Utah, the 33-year-old Austrian also celebrated ten victories on the World Cup tour during that winter on his way to a triple Crystal triumph.
With his six wins in downhill, he set the best mark in the specialty since the days of the great Franz Klammer, a star he admired a lot after watching him winning gold at he 1976 Olympics at Innsbruck!
Stephan also captured three Super-G race and one giant slalom. Quite an achievement for this long-time veteran who is racing since the early 1990’s on the World Cup tour.

Stephan the fighter

These performances are particularly remarkable for Stephan as he had to fight hard to remain on the National Team in the mid 1990’s. After becoming a double World Champion at age 21 in Super-G and combined as the youngest member of the Austrian squad at the 1991 Saalbach Ski World’s, the handsome Stephan struggled with injuries and set-backs in the following seasons. He seemed to have entered a dead-end trail in spring 1996 when he lost his spot on the National team after more disappointing results, including a crash in Super-G at the 1996 Ski World’s in Spain where he was automatically qualified as the defending World Champion since no Super-G took place at Morioka in 1993!
Yet at 26, “Steff” didn’t feel ready to give up the sport he loved so much and he looked for ways to get back on the team. Luckily, the President of the Austrian Federation, Mr. Schroeksnadel and the alpine staff found a solution – he was allowed to continue to train at his own expenses and to compete on the Europa Cup tour, the “B” league of Alpine Ski Racing. He dominated that circuit in 1997 and qualified himself back into the team in clinching the 1997 Overall Title.
But coming back in the “A” team was not enough for him – he was ready for more, much more. Despite high startnumbers, he soon found his way to the top and accumulated a series of excellent results, including his first World Cup victory at Crans-Montana in the last GS of the season as well as a silver medal in that event at the 1998 Nagano Olympics! He ended the winter at a sensational 3rd place in the Overall World Cup standings won by Hermann Maier.
The intense rivalry between these two athletes pushed him forward in the next seasons and he kept on winning races in other disciplines, including his first downhill in December 2000 at Lake Louise. He was close to win the DH World Cup title in March 2001 at Are after another win at Kvitfjell, but Maier beat him in that last race to grab the Crystal Cup! It was a huge disappointment for Stephan, but also a strong motivation to fight back in 2002.

At the top

Very focused and more determined than ever before, the Austrian trained harder and better than before during the 2001 summer . He was pretty confident when the season started in October 2001 at Soelden as he came in 2nd in GS behind France’s surprising Frederic Covili! In fact, it was the start of an amazing winter for Stephan who didn’t let himself be distracted by the absence of his teammate Hermann Maier, who suffered a bad motorcycle accident late August.
When he won two consecutive races at Val d’Isère and finished 3rd in the other one won by America’s Bode Miller, it was obvious that Eberharter finally found the best momentum in his career. There was almost no week-end afterwards that he didn’t celebrate a success or a top-3 finish. He became one of the few superstars to dominate “Classics” such as Val Gardena, Wengen, Kitzbühel or Garmisch-Partenkirchen during the same winter, winning sometimes two races in 24 hours – as in Val d’Isère, Kitzbühel, St Moritz.
He also showed his immense class and strong nerves at Salt Lake City after failing to clinch the expected gold medal in downhill and Super-G (he was 3rd and 2nd in those races). Two almost perfect runs in GS propelled him to the dreamed Olympic title in his last attempt, making him the happiest man on snow that day!
With a total of three Olympic medals and three World Cup titles, Eberharter certainly achieved one of the most impressive seasons in the history of modern ski racing.

More to reach

His fans and supporters honored him with a huge party in the Valley of Ziller later on in March – in fact quite a tough task for the normally reserved Tyrolian who doesn’t like to be too much exposed to the public’s attention off the slopes!
No question that he aims now to defend his leadership during the 2003 winter and add more triumphs to his golden book, especially during the 2003 Ski World’s at St Moritz. In 2001, he missed his second world gold in Super-G at St Anton by only 8/100 of a second behind USA’s Daron Rahlves!
After quite a hectic springtime and many travels around Austria and Europe, Stephan spent as much time as possible to recover and relax. He went cycling and playing some golf – not as much as he wished, but he will have more time for it after his ski racing career in one of two years. For the moment, he is just looking for more fun and more wins!

Patrick Lang