The 30,000-mile ski race - Peter Miller - 1970-71 World Cup skiing season

At the top level of international ski racing, more demanding than even Olympic competition, is the World Cup, an annual 15 Race Grand Tour to determine the world's best racers, male and female, in the three Alpine events of downhill, slalom, and giant slalom. This book recreates the competition for the 1970-71 World Cup, focusing primarily on the American team, and it's largely frustrated efforts to establish itself in the predominantly European sport as a better than fourth rate player. Young, intense, and talented but prey to political pressures back home and confusions in their motivations, the Americans fight not only their better trained competitions but also themselves, and, as they progress on the circuit, their authoritarian coach Willy Schaeffler. This book gives you a sense of what it is like to compete on an Alpine slope at speeds up to 80 mph. It also portrays the colorful and frenetic background panorama of big time skiing -the racer chasers, the commercial hustlers, and t