Phil Mahre

At the end of the 1984 season, though, Mahre retired from World Cup racing. He returned to Yakima, Washington, with his family. However, he was not through with moving fast; he and his brother Steve started a ski instruction and apparel business, and in 1987 they became interested in driving race cars. In 1997, they raced a Pontiac Trans Am. Mahre told Robert Sullivan in Sports Illustrated, "It was a great year. We raced nine times, and I think we made progress." The brothers also learned about their new sport by attending the Skip Barber Racing School in Willow Springs, California.

The brothers focused on "endurance" motor racing, which involves events lasting longer than three hours, and for which they worked as a team. They discovered that on certain tracks, Phil was faster, and on others, Steve was. "Each time behind the wheel we learned something," Mahre told Sullivan. They noted that there were some similarities between skiing and racing: both require concentration, although the many hours required for racing were obviously much longer than the few minutes needed in ski racing. Both also require fast reflexes and reactions, as well as an analytical side: just as they studied the ski course before racing it, they look over a race track and discuss their strategy before getting in the car to race on it.

The brothers had a setback at the 24 Hours of Daytona Race in 1988, when Phil spun their car, and a third driver they had hired for the long race crashed it. In March, Mahre spun and crashed the car while on his eighth practice lap. He told Sullivan, "I was trying to go too fast on cold tires, which is something I learned not to do last year…. It was just as if I had hooked a tip [ofa ski] and torn a ligament: I put us on the sidelines. I sure hope that's the low point of the season."

Some other drivers resented the Mahre brothers because they had arrived in racing with famous names and a reserve of funds from ski winnings. Racer Mark Hutchins told Sullivan, "A lot of drivers come from underprivileged backgrounds and have had to make serious personal sacrifices to be in racing. Yes, there's some resentment when others aren't required to work to get a ride." But he added, "Personally, I like having them out here."

Mahre told Sullivan, "I don't consider us a threat to anybody," and noted that he once told some of the famed drivers in the sport, "We'll just try to stay out of your way and try to be predictable. Just don't run us over." The drivers, he said, were "very friendly. They said, 'Good to have you here, it'll help the sport.'"

The brothers' car-racing hobby was expensive, though, so both twins went back to ski racing with the U.S. Pro Tour, hoping to win enough money to support their racing habit. Mahre won several races, but was not impressed with his competition. In 1991, he told Johnson, "I'm definitely a has-been, and they're all never-weres."

Mahre won the eight-race American City series in the Sports 2000 class in 1990, and in 1991 he and his brother began racing on the GT-2 circuit for Trans-Am cars. Mahre bluntly told Johnson, "I expect to make only enough to pay the bills. But I've never lost sleep over winning or losing before, and I'm not going to start now."

In April of 1991, Mahre won the overall Plymouth Super Series Slalom at Steamboat Springs, Colorado, and again said he was retiring from ski competition, although he did not rule out the possibility of competing in occasional races to raise money for his cars.