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25 OCT 2000 > Last Chance for Champions?
St. Anton, Austria...Salt Lake City, Utah... these locations will host the next holy grails of alpine ski racing. During the next two years, these two medal events, the 2001 World Championships in St. Anton and the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, will be the last chances for a generation of famed veterans to grab glory.

Top champions, such as the USA's Picabo Street, attempting another comeback two years after her disastrous crash at Crans-Montana, Switzerland, and Hermann Maier, the record-setting Austrian who won four of the five trophies last season, are just two of these veterans with plans to retire in 2002 after the Olympics and the World Cup Finals (to be held in Hermann's hometown of Flachau, Austria).

It was in Flachau, south of Salzburg, where the then 23-year-old Maier first convinced Austrian trainers of his potential. Wearing a blue snowboard racing suit, Hermann skied in his first World Cup event in January '96. Twice clocking excellent—unofficial— times at that event, and after subsequent years of struggling, Maier has since become one of the most impressive talents in alpine ski racing.

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