Phil Mahre

Mahre, one of nine children, grew up skiing. His father Dave, a former apple grower, took a job as manager of a ski area in order to support his large family. Mahre and his siblings were often dressed in clothes from the lost-and-found at the White Pass Lodge in the Cascade Mountains of Washington, where their father worked. Their school was an hour and a half away but the ski slopes were right outside their door. Mahre did his homework during the long bus ride home, got off the bus, and hit the mountains, hiking in summer and skiing in winter. By the time Mahre and his twin brother Steve were nine, they were already winning local children's

Phil Mahre

races; Steve, who was born four minutes later than Mahre, was never quite as fast as Mahre, but he was still a top skier. Although the brothers competed with each other, they also celebrated each other's victories.

Mahre made the U.S. Ski Team at age fifteen. At the 1980 Olympics in Lake Placid, New York, Mahre won a silver medal in slalom. It was only the third Alpine medal won by an American male in ten Olympics over the past forty-four years; no American had ever won a gold medal in Alpine skiing. However, that would soon change.

Although Mahre was a top contender, he also emphasized enjoying his sport, and he was not motivated by medals and honors as much as other racers were. On the eve of the last race of the 1981 World Cup competition, when Mahre was under pressure to become America's first champion skier, Mahre played three hours of basketball despite friends' warnings not to waste energy. He told Tom Callahan in Time, "A lot of people say I'm crazy, but I think all these things are games, and games are for fun."

The fun paid off, because Mahre won the overall World Cup Championship that year, as well as in 1982 and 1983, an unprecedented feat for an American skier.

As a result of his win, Mahre became so well known in Europe that when he returned to the United States, where the public knows comparatively little about his sport, it was a relief for him to not be recognized on the street. "I don't think there are many Americans who understand what I've done," he told Tom Callahan in Time. "That's unfortunate for skiing but nice for me. I'm not one for fame and fortune."

At the 1984 Olympics, held in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, Mahre edged out brother Steve by .21 of a second, winning gold and leaving silver for Steve. Just after this win, Mahre found out that his wife Holly had just given birth to their youngest child, Alexander, in Scottsdale, Arizona. Mahre told Mark Beech in Sports Illustrated, "I couldn't tell you the date of any win I've ever had with the exception of that one. My son's birthday reminds me of the gold medal, not the other way around."

Mahre also told William Oscar Johnson in Sports Illustrated, "This, to me, is just another victory. It's wrong to say this is the best day of my life. If it were, what am I going to do with the rest of my life."

This modest assessment of Mahre's abilities, and those of his brother, was not shared by others in the ski world. Christin Cooper wrote in Skiing that the brothers "were a team unto themselves, riding their own comet that few ordinary mortals could seem to latch onto. The more momentum they gained, the farther behind the rest of our men seemed to fall."