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WorldNet Service Installation Disk - Cybercathlon Games and Interactive Tour of Olympic Museum (1996).ISO
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00844_Field_wt7.txt.txt
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1996-06-03
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While the Scandinavians had been
skiing for centuries, it wasn't until
the late 1800s that an eccentric
Austrian named Mathias Zdarsky
realized that what worked up North
just wouldn't do on steep Alpine
terrains. In a book he wrote in
1896, Zdarsky made the first
serious attempt to work out a
technique for downhill skiing. But it
took an English Methodist
missionary, Henry Lunn, to develop
the sport of downhill racing.
Olympic Alpine skiing consists of
downhill racing, where the object is
to tear down a precipitous course
as fast as possible, achieving
speeds of more than 65 mph;
slalom, where skiers follow a
steep, twisting course defined by
pairs of flags called gates; and
giant slalom, which is a controlled
downhill race, combining elements
of slalom and downhill skiing.
Alpine skiing was not introduced in
the Winter Olympics until 1936. Not
surprisingly, the Alpine nations --
Switzerland, Austria, Germany,
Italy, France -- have dominated the
events, but the Americans and
Canadians have also had some
great successes. American
Andrea Mead Laurence captured
double gold in the Slalom and Giant
Slalom in 1952, a feat no other
American skier has accomplished,
and the twin brothers Phil and
Steve Mahre brought home Gold
and Silver in the 1984 slalom event.
Without question, the most famous,
or infamous skier of recent years
has been Italy's Alberto Tomba,
who skied to Gold in the slalom and
giant slalom in 1988, and then won
the giant slalom again in 1992, the
first Olympic downhiller to take two
consecutive Golds in the same
event. He also won Silvers in the
slalom in 1992 and 1994, where
with a heroic second run after
faltering on the first, he almost
brought home another gold. As
famous for his off-the-slopes
lifestyle as for his reckless skiing,
Tomba "La Bomba" has amassed
three Golds and two Silvers over
three Olympics.