Christian Mayer (ski racer)

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Christian Mayer Alpine skiing
nation AustriaAustria Austria
birthday January 10, 1972 (age 48)
place of birth Villach , Austria
size 180 cm
Weight 95 kg
Career
discipline Slalom , giant slalom , super-G ,
downhill , combination
society SV Faakersee
status resigned
End of career March 9, 2006
Medal table
Olympic games 0 × gold 0 × silver 2 × bronze
World championships 0 × gold 0 × silver 1 × bronze
Junior World Championship 0 × gold 1 × silver 1 × bronze
Olympic rings winter Olympics
bronze Lillehammer 1994 Giant slalom
bronze Nagano 1998 combination
FIS Alpine World Ski Championships
bronze Vail / Beaver Creek 1999 slalom
FIS Alpine Ski Junior World Championships
silver Geilo 1991 Super G
bronze Geilo 1991 combination
Placements in the Alpine Ski World Cup
 Individual world cup victories 7th
 Overall World Cup 7. ( 1998/99 )
 Downhill World Cup 45th (1998/99, 1999/00 )
 Super G World Cup 4. (1998/99)
 Giant Slalom World Cup 1. ( 1993/94 )
 Slalom World Cup 8. ( 1995/96 )
 Podium placements 1. 2. 3.
 Super G 1 1 1
 Giant slalom 6th 9 3
 slalom 0 1 1
 

Christian Mayer (born January 10, 1972 in Villach , Carinthia ) is a former Austrian ski racer . For several years he was one of the best giant slalom runners , but also achieved good success in slalom and Super-G . In his 15-year World Cup career , Mayer celebrated seven victories, six of them in giant slalom and one in super-G. In the 1993/94 season , he decided the giant slalom World Cup for himself. At the Olympic Winter Games, the two-time Austrian champion won a bronze medal each in 1994 in the giant slalom and in 1998 in the combination ; at world championships he also won a bronze medal in slalom in 1999 .

biography

Sports career

Christian Mayer was accepted into the junior squad of the Austrian Ski Association (ÖSV) in 1987 and was promoted to the European Cup squad a year later . After initial successes in this racing series, the graduate of the Schladming Ski School was accepted into the World Cup team in 1990. In April 1991 Mayer won silver in Super-G and bronze in combination at the Junior World Championship in Norway . In the winter of 1991/92 he reached his first top 10 placements in the World Cup and also qualified for the Winter Olympics in Albertville , where he was twelfth in the giant slalom. In 1992 he became Austrian champion in giant slalom and combined.

After no top placings in the winter of 1992/93 - he also couldn't qualify for the World Championships in Morioka - the Carinthian rose to the best giant slalom runner in the 1993/94 season . On December 13, 1993, he won in Val-d'Isère as a "Group 2 driver", hence only starting number. 25, his first World Cup race and with another four podium places, Mayer won the Giant Slalom World Cup with just two points ahead of Norwegian Kjetil André Aamodt . He finished eleventh in the overall World Cup. At the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer , Mayer was still in the lead in the first giant slalom run, but with the tenth running time in the second run he fell back to third place. In the combination he was eliminated. Mayer could not repeat the successes of last year in 1994/95 . He was only twice in the top ten, once on the podium as third in the giant slalom in Alta Badia . Also in the winter of 1995/96 he was only once on the podium in second place in the Park City slalom (victory missed by 0.01 sec.), But he was able to regularly place in the top ten again, making him eighth and ranked eighth in the Slalom World Cup reached eleven in the Giant Slalom World Cup. He also achieved top 10 results at the world championship in the Sierra Nevada , which was postponed by a year , where he was sixth in giant slalom and ninth in slalom. The 1996/97 season was less successful again , in which he was among the top ten several times, but remained without a podium. At the 1997 World Championships in Sestriere , he narrowly missed a medal in fourth in the combination and tenth in the Super-G.

After three years without a win , Mayer found his way back to winning ways from the 1997/98 season . On December 21, 1997 he won his second World Cup giant slalom on the Gran Risa in Alta Badia and two weeks later he won the Vitranc Cup in Kranjska Gora . With that he reached third place in the Giant Slalom World Cup behind Hermann Maier and Michael von Grünigen and also ninth place in the overall World Cup. At the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano he fell short of expectations in his strongest discipline, giant slalom, in ninth place. In slalom, however, he achieved his best result of the season with fifth place and in the combination he won the bronze medal behind Mario Reiter and Lasse Kjus . In the 1998/99 season Mayer was not only successful in giant slalom, but also in slalom and especially in Super-G. At the beginning of the season he was third in Aspen for the first time in this discipline and after a second place at Patscherkofel near Innsbruck - he was only beaten by Hermann Maier in the nine-time victory of the Austrian team - Christian Mayer won the Super on March 11, 1999 -G in the Spanish Sierra Nevada. In the final ranking, he reached fourth place in the Super G World Cup, fifth in the Giant Slalom World Cup and seventh in the overall World Cup. At the 1999 World Championships in Vail / Beaver Creek , after two Olympic medals, he also won his first World Championship medal with third place in the slalom - only two hundredths of a second behind second-placed Lasse Kjus. He was also fourth in the combined and eighth in the giant slalom. In the Super-G Mayer was only a spectator, because despite his two podium places already before the World Cup, he did not get any of the four starting places due to the density of the Austrian Super-G team. In the 1999/2000 season , Mayer again achieved good results on a broad front. This time the giant slalom was clearly his strongest discipline again. While he was able to book fifth place each as the best result in the slalom and Super-G, he won three races in the giant slalom, on December 22, 1999 in Saalbach-Hinterglemm , on March 8, 2000 in Kranjska Gora and on March 11 in Hinterstoder . In the Giant Slalom World Cup he was beaten by just under three points by Hermann Maier, who also won three races but had more podium places; in the overall World Cup, he finished eighth.

The 2000/01 season began Mayer still with two fifth places in the giant slalom in Soelden and Park City, but then fell his achievements back significantly and he came rarely into the top 15. This was due to the one hand, health problems, on the other hand he could difficult to adjust to the new carving technique. As a result of his poor performance, he not only missed the World Cup in St. Anton, but was also downgraded by the national team to the A-team of the ÖSV. In the next few years, Mayer only appeared in World Cups in giant slalom. After he had achieved three top 10 places again in the 2001/02 season , but missed a major event at the Olympic Games for the second time in a row, he was able to improve again in the winter of 2002/03 and achieved second with two Places in Park City and Kranjska Gora as well as a third place in Alta Badia the seventh place in the giant slalom world cup. As a result, nothing stood in the way of participating in the 2003 World Cup in St. Moritz , where he was unable to continue his upward trend with 14th place in the giant slalom. Even in the World Cup he could no longer keep up with the top. In the 2003/04 season he was twice in the top ten, but after struggling with health problems again in the next two years and only winning World Cup points twice, the 34-year-old gave up on March 9, 2006 after 15 years announced his retirement from ski racing in the World Cup.

Further career

After the end of his active career, Mayer completed a course in sports management at the University of Klagenfurt . Since September 2006 he has been working for the Slovenian ski company Elan , which has a production site in Finkenstein, Carinthia , in the areas of development, testing and marketing. He is also active in development and testing for the Italian ski boot manufacturer Dalbello, organizes events for companies and, in cooperation with the Kleine Zeitung, racing camps for children.

Since 2007 Mayer has been involved in ski broadcasts as a camera runner and co-commentator for the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF). In 2008 and 2010 he took part in the ORF soccer show “ Das Match ”. Since December 2007, the amateur soccer player has been chairman of the Krumpendorfer Sportklub Wörthersee - the soccer club of his new home town Krumpendorf am Wörthersee . In his spare time he is also an active golfer , Mayer ended his excursion into motorsport after an accident.

successes

winter Olympics

World championships

World Cup ratings

Christian Mayer once won the giant slalom discipline.

season total Departure Super G Giant slalom slalom
space Points space Points space Points space Points space Points
1991/92 79. 71 - - - - 27. 71 - -
1992/93 82. 65 - - - - 30th 30th 34. 35
1993/94 11. 533 - - - - 1. 496 35. 37
1994/95 34. 224 - - - - 14th 125 20th 99
1995/96 17th 457 - - - - 11. 215 8th. 242
1996/97 28. 333 - - 19th 85 21st 108 18th 137
1997/98 9. 590 - - 29 32 3. 429 22nd 109
1998/99 7th 766 45. 20th 4th 252 5. 297 12. 197
1999/00 8th. 802 45. 16 11. 162 2. 517 24. 107
2000/01 36. 218 - - 40. 16 13. 163 35. 39
2001/02 53. 122 - - - - 15th 122 - -
2002/03 38. 234 - - - - 7th 234 - -
2003/04 67. 98 - - - - 20th 98 - -
2004/05 143. 5 - - - - 56. 5 - -
2005/06 135. 8th - - - - 50. 8th - -

World Cup victories

Mayer won seven World Cup races and was on the podium 16 more times. He achieved a total of 67 top 10 placements.

date place country discipline
December 13, 1993 Val d'Isère France Giant slalom
December 21, 1997 Alta Badia Italy Giant slalom
January 3, 1998 Kranjska Gora Slovenia Giant slalom
March 11, 1999 Sierra Nevada Spain Super G
December 22, 1999 Saalbach-Hinterglemm Austria Giant slalom
March 8, 2000 Kranjska Gora Slovenia Giant slalom
March 11, 2000 Hinterstoder Austria Giant slalom

Junior World Championships

  • Zinal 1990 : 5th giant slalom, 6th downhill, 20th super-G
  • Geilo 1991 : 2nd Super-G, 3rd combination, 5th giant slalom, 8th slalom, 11th descent

Austrian championships

Awards

Christian Mayer was also voted "Carinthian Sportsman of the Year" five times (1994, 1996, 1998, 1999, 2000) by the Carinthian Sports Press Club.

literature

  • From Grossglockner to Klammer stitch . 100 years of skiing in Carinthia. Pages 60–63, Christian Mayer: When the name Sailer was mentioned, his heart fell in the pants, Carinthia Verlag 2007, publisher Landesschiverband u. Kleine Zeitung, ISBN 978-3-85378-622-2
  • Austrian Ski (ed.): Austrian ski stars of A-Z . Ablinger & Garber, Hall in Tirol 2008, ISBN 978-3-9502285-7-1 , pp. 266-268

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b State awards until 2009 on the website of the Federal Ministry for National Defense and Sport (PDF, 300 kB, page 35)
personal data
SURNAME Mayer, Christian
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian ski racer
DATE OF BIRTH January 10, 1972
PLACE OF BIRTH Villach , Carinthia, Austria