|
 The
feelings of uncertainty and worry weren't new, but
they worsened in the early summer of 1966. Erika
Schinegger, premiere downhiller of the Austrian
national ski team, was training for the World
Alpine Ski Championships. Schinegger was a
powerful skier, who occasionally clocked times
better than the men. Popular with her teammates and
blessed by a lively sense of humor, she looked
younger than her 18 years. She had curly brown hair
piled up like a sloping haystack and spoke in a
deep voice.
At training camp, Schinegger's roommate was a
blue-eyed girl with white, velvety skin. One
evening, after a hard day of skiing and gym work
and ready to go to bed, the girl undressed in front
of Schinegger. It was a normal act among female
teammates, but Schinegger had been troubled by such
scenes.
"She stood there perfectly naked," Schinegger
recalled 22 years later in the autobiography
Mein Sieg Uber Mich ("My Victory Over Me").
"I started trembling as if an earthquake had freed
something in me."
Bewildered, the teenager suppressed her
feelings, determined to focus on ski racing. In
three months, she would fly to Portillo, Chile, for
the FIS World Alpine Ski Championships. Her
goal: To win the downhill gold medal.
Schinegger had been born to a prosperous farming
family in Austria's Kaernten mountains, home to
future champion downhiller Franz Klammer. The
infant Erika was delivered by a country midwife,
who announced to the family, after a cursory
examination, "Congratulations, a girl!" At age 8,
she made her first pair of skis from barrel staves.
At age 12, starting in an impossible 314th
position, she won her first race.
When she wasn't helping with farm chores, the
youthful Schinegger watched hours of televised
races, memorizing the techniques of the era's
stars-Toni Sailer, Anderl Molterer, Francois
Bonlieu. At the age of 16, she was invited to join
the Austrian National Youth Team. She
rapidly became a leader, smoked cigarettes with
downhill star Olga Pall and was the life of the
party. She became an employee of the Kneissl ski
company, receiving free skis, travel expenses and a
small salary...and the promise of big money if she
won a gold medal.
At Sun Valley in 1965, she won a downhill.
Afterward, with Karl Schranz and Jean-Claude Killy,
she was interviewed on Salt Lake City television.
"The American trip started the happiest period of
my entire young life," Schinegger recalls in the
autobiography.
The August 1966 FIS World Alpine Ski
Championships in the Andes proved a disaster for
Schinegger's teammates. The French, led by their
new star, Jean-Claude Killy, won a record 16 out of
24 medals. The only Austrian chance for a gold
medal was in the women's downhill-a brutally steep
course. "The speed of the racers was close to the
maximum tolerable in a women's race," wrote the
dean of ski journalists, Serge Lang.
France's Marielle Goitschel and Annie Famose had
recorded the fastest times. When Canada's Nancy
Greene broke her coccyx in a frightening fall and
was being carried off the course, Schinegger waited
in the starting area. So far none of the Austrian
girls had done well. "It's all up to you," her
coach said.
Schinegger catapulted herself down the Andean
mountainside, letting her skis go...not trying to
control them precisely. She flew downward, skimming
the bumps. With the crowd screaming, she crossed
the finish line. She had beaten Goitschel by an
eighth-of-a-second. Elated, the Austrians hoisted
Schinegger on their shoulders, celebrating the
team's sole world championship victory.
Austria named Schinegger Athlete of the Year.
Her equipment suppliers paid her 100,000 schillings
($6,500 today)...under the table, of course.
Winning money in a race violated Olympic rules, but
it was common among top racers at the time.
Additionally, Franz Kneissl presented her with a
gold-and-diamond brooch. Her hometown gave her a
building lot. She bought a Porsche. A young farmer
mailed her a letter proposing marriage.
Once again, though, Schinegger was beset by
doubts. She had never menstruated nor developed
breasts. Again she focused her thoughts on one
goal-this time, to win all three alpine gold medals
at the 1968 Olympic Winter Games (as Killy would
do). In training runs, she was often as fast as the
men.
"Anyone who outskis me cannot be a woman!"
protested Karl Schranz, who was distrustful,
clairvoyant-or perhaps both.
Schinegger faced a new challenge. Before
competing in the '68 Olympics in Grenoble, France,
athletes had to undergo a gender test. When the
results of the first saliva test came back, the
examining urologist exclaimed, "I'm going crazy.
There's a man racing on the Austrian ladies'
team!"
The former Austrian female athlete of the year
told his story in a 1988 autobiography.
Under suspicion, Schinegger was retested. When
the confirming results came in, Austria's highest
ski officials asked her to resign "for personal
reasons." Soon the rumors became newspaper and
television reports. The reigning women's world
downhill champion was not a woman.
But what was she?
A shocked Schinegger entered an Innsbruck
hospital for X-rays. An abdominal incision
confirmed that she bore male sex organs inside.
After months of painful surgery, Schinegger emerged
from the hospital in men's clothes. And had a new
name, Erik.
For a young person, whose whole life success had
come from ski racing, the experience had been
degrading and poisoned by cynicism. Schinegger's
hometown withdrew its gift of a building lot. Franz
Kneissl, Schinegger claims, had promised money to a
surgeon who could make him a biological woman in
order to safeguard the ski manufacturer's claim to
the gold medal.
Erik resumed racing on the men's Europa Cup tour
and won three races in the winter of 1968-69.
Whether he might have become the first person in
any sport to reign as both a men's and a women's
world champion will never be known.
Head coach Franz Hoppichler told Schinegger he
wasn't wanted on the Austrian team. His presence
was an "embarrassment."
Retiring from racing, Erik, 21, became a ski
instructor. He dated girls, and in 1975 married in
a ceremony attended by a thousand guests, including
Franz Klammer.
Should Erik Schinegger retain the 1966 women's
World Championship downhill gold medal? A female
Russian gold and bronze medalist, who was
discovered in 1967 to bear male chromosomes, lost
her medals. And today, when athletes are being
stripped of their medals for using masculinizing
anabolic steroids, is it any less illicit to
compete in a women's race with a natural, God-given
supply of male hormones?
One answer can be found in a Canadian Academy
of Sport Medicine 1997 statement on sex
testing. "Individuals raised as females, who are
psychologically and socially females from
childhood," says the Academy, "should be eligible
to compete in women's competition, regardless of
their chromosomal, gonadal and hormonal sex."
"Erika didn't attempt to deceive anyone," says
Nancy Greene, although there were some who thought
so. In agreement is Marc Hodler, who was FIS
president during the Portillo world championships.
Hodler says the name, E. Schinegger, will remain in
the FIS record book as the 1966 women's world
downhill champion. Notwithstanding, Schinegger
voluntarily surrendered the 1966 downhill gold
medal, so that in 1996 it could be presented to
second-place winner Marielle Goitschel at the
French ski team's 30th anniversary celebration of
the Portillo races.
Today, Erik Schinegger is a father of two and
happily operates a restaurant and ski school in his
home village of Agsdorf, the survivor of an
experience that would have destroyed lesser lives.
Man or woman, recalls World Cup champion Nancy
Greene, Schinegger's personality was the same. . .
"generous, fun-loving and outgoing."
Citation
— Fry. J. (2005). Women's Champ Was Male.
www.skimag.com
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