Austria needs a dose of Klammer 1976 re-runs to heel the pain - at least few saw the calamity live

Without a single medal from the 2010 Vancouver Olympics the Austrian men’s alpine team would do well to avoid the spot-light for several years after they became the first Austrian men’s alpine team to miss out on a single medal at a modern winter Olympics. Equivalents are hard to come by but not having a Brit in the world darts championships quarter finals would come close. An Austrian colleague of mine summarised the general feeling today in saying that the Austrians through a combination of success and arrogance have set extremely high standards to maintain - making their abysmal performance seem ever more calamitous. This has been coming for some time but such a public failure might rile the Austrians who generally have had little other than smugness to deal with for many years. Results have been mixed for the men’s ski team recently and reached a low at the Vancouver games. The games themselves came in for much criticism. I lived for a year in British Columbia and the quality of the people and the place are fantastic. You can’t really blame the organising committee for the weather although the fatality in the run up the opening surely raised serious safety issues and you would hope that justice is done there. I loved the games but the one gripe was the spectator numbers - Europe and North America are very different cultures with great aspects in each entity but the sterile atmosphere at the finish areas of the races was seriously disappointing. Watching those few ticket holders squeezed in beside the corporate boxes was a huge let-down as a TV spectator and I am sure there were a few racers who bemoaned the lack of atmosphere. Ski race crowds are knowledgeable with people who appreciate what they see - I can’t see how excluding them would benefit anyone other than the corporate box sales. Give me Kristian Ghedina show-boating to the masses in the Kitzbuhel Hahnenkamm finish area any day over a sterile and stage managed crowd.