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Home to two huge public thermal baths, plus 50-odd hotel spas, BKK has an unrivalled bathing culture for a ski town.įranz Klammer in action during the 1976 Olympic Games in Innsbruck. The resort first found fame for its radon-rich local spring waters, whose curative powers were noted in the 11th century.
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Other than this swooping, 3km (1.8m) black run, BKK's 103km (64m) network of mainly red runs is a gentle affair, better suiting beginners, leisurely intermediates and families than mileage-hungry thrillseekers. It was also here that, in 2004, a new World Cup course – the pacy highlight of our ski day – was named in his honour. It was here that he would ski to school from his parents' cattle farm, that he honed his mountain moves, and that he won his first major downhill in 1971's inaugural European Cup. The small, traditional resort of Bad Kleinkirchheim (dubbed BKK by British visitors) has been good to Klammer. "Where is our snowboarder? Oh, there you are already. As he stops to wait for stragglers, and I sit down to take a breather, he peers uphill over my head. So it's ridiculously gratifying when my attempts to channel some of the reckless speed of his Innsbruck triumph (which I've been looping on YouTube) start to pay off, even allowing me, at one glorious moment, to burn off his annoyingly accomplished tangerine shadow. With snowboards inherently around 20% slower than skis, I know I'll have my work cut out just to keep Klammer in my sights, and for the first couple of runs, I only come close to his virtually turn-free tracks at the regular stops he makes to allow us all to regroup. Gentle slopes … Bad Kleinkirchheim’s 103km ski network is ideal for beginners and leisurely intermediates. The man they call "The Kaiser", however, is a master of social ease and banters good-humouredly with everyone around him, reminiscing about his competitive glory days, discussing his more recent passions for golf and cycling, and voicing concern for the sanitised dullness of today's "too business-like" downhill racing scene. This makes for some initial awkwardness, as we all pretend not to be desperate to share his chairlift, apart from a Viennese Mrs Robinson in snug tangerine ski pants who swiftly sidles into the Klammer-flanking position she will maintain for most of the day. His still-unsurpassed achievements in Austria's national sport – 26 World Cup wins plus a legendary hell-for-leather Olympic victory in Innsbruck in 1976 –make him something akin to Pelé in his country, but he arrives with no surly manager, no controlling PR and no security. Add to that his status as the greatest downhill skier in history, and the annual ski day he hosts in his boyhood resort for a group of lucky punters chosen in a lottery, and it sends a frisson of macho glamour into the crisp Carinthian air. Though I wouldn't apply this piece of zoological trivia to the huddle of excited skiers, among them a significant number of expensively maintained femmes d'un certain âge, waiting to meet their hero at the Kaiserburgbahn lift station in Bad Kleinkirchheim, Austria, early one winter morning.Īt 60, Franz Klammer remains a charismatic and ruggedly dishy figure, along Liam Neeson lines. B ecause they live and hunt alone, there is no collective noun for cougars.