This week's New Yorker contains an interesting article about alpine skiing and the two men who compete for its throne, Bode Miller and Austrian Hermann Maier.
Maier dominated the sport before a motorcycle accident nearly severed his right leg at the knee. He made a miraculous comeback and was back on skis within five months, and his nickname The Herminator seems apt. He is depicted, in the article, as a skiing machine, treated by the most advanced doctors and medical techniques: a real-life Ivan Drago. Maier once challenged Arnold Schwarzenegger to an arm wrestling match and won.
Meanwhile, Bode Miller is depicted as an athletic savant (state tennis champion and soccer star) who brought enormous natural talent to the sport of alping skiing but never seemed able to capitalize on it with proper technique. He always ignored his instructors and skiied slightly out of control, leaning back, body flailing, turning late, usually crashing out of runs. Then, one day, a sales rep put a pair of hourglass-shaped carving skis in his hands, and he never looked back. Other professional skiers were too proud to use what were thought of as tools to aid recreational skiers, but the carving power of the skis was perfect for Miller's technique and vaulted him to stardom.