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Streif: one of the few ski slopes forbidden to women skiers

Published: Jan 16, 2024

Content

1 The last taboo in skiing

2 Vonn's challenge

3 The last woman to go down the Streif against the stopwatch

Departure of the Streif - Hannenkamm (Kitzbühel)

The last sporting ghetto of the Alpine skiing World Cup arrives this week in Kitzbühel (Austria). It is the most mythical slope of the circuit, designed for a time when people didn't go downhill as fast as they do now. Under this pretext, women's competitions are banned. A year ago, the American champion Lindsey Vonn defied prejudice by jumping from the top. At night, of course.

One hundred years ago, the Emilian Alfonsina Strada was the first woman to race a grand tour in stages, the Giro d'Italia. She did it with the men, although she had to suffer the insults of the people who called her a whore because she had her thighs exposed. Halfway through the race she was disqualified due to pressure from the organization and riders, with clear sexist undertones. The cyclist was then allowed to finish the Giro unofficially, without her overall times counting. And she managed to finish the more than 3,600 km of the race, in an unprecedented milestone that would be remembered for generations.

Sixty-six years ago, in 1958, fellow Italian Maria Teresa de Filippis, 'Pilotino', was the first woman in the world to compete in Formula 1, on the back of a Maserati. The first female boxers date back to the 1700s: Elisabeth Wilkinson fought in England against both women and men. But to see women's boxing in the Olympics outside the ghetto of demonstration sport, we had to get to London 2012.

The marathon was another taboo. In 1896 the Greek Stamàta Revithi wanted to participate in the Athens Olympics but was not allowed to enter because she was not a man. She showed up at the start of Marathon anyway, but before entering the Panathinaiko stadium she was stopped by the police. On April 19, 1967, a twenty-year-old American woman decided to anticipate the impending revolution: she registered for the Boston Marathon using only her initials, K.V. Swiss. No one could imagine that K.V. stood for Katrine Virginia, more simply Kathy. When they saw her running with her curls in the wind, they immediately understood that it was sacrilege: they tried to stop her with violence, but her boyfriend defended her by losing his place in the Olympic team for Mexico '68. Kathy managed to finish her race and seven years later she won the New York marathon, now open to women.

The last taboo in skiing

The last glass ceiling of the sport on a ski slope is found on an extremely steep slope: the Streif, the most fascinating and terrifying 3,312 meters in the world.

The starting gate of the downhill race is at 1,665 meters above sea level and the finish line at 805 meters. Usually before the start the skiers joke and chat among themselves, but in Kitzbühel Didier Cuche said a few years ago that an unreal silence reigns. It is fear. The best alpine skiers in the world can accelerate from 0 to 60 km per hour in just 5 seconds from the moment they hit the slope.

From then on it is a succession of abysses, mousetraps (literally: there is a section called Mausefalle, a chasm of about eighty meters), 180° turns, very narrow up to the Haubsergkante, the most dangerous and fascinating part: the jump, a left curve where the centrifugal force reaches 3.5 G and a final where the body (already exhausted by fatigue) suffers maximum pressure and the speed reaches 140 km/h. In some sections the slope is 69 percent, a vertical hell.

There is a film that unfortunately was never translated into Spanish, but it does have an English version, which explains all these sensations very well. Titled cmo no, "Streif - One Hell of a Ride" was presented in 2016 as "full of snow, passion and testosterone", making it clear in the trailer that women had nothing to do with it. Too much pressure, too much slope, too much speed.

The history of the Streif is a legend that feeds on its victims: the falls of Gattermann, Vitalini, Stemmle, Ortlieb, Albrecht and Strobl are passed on like the legends of ogres that must frighten children. Last year it was Norwegian Henrik Röa's turn: he flipped several times at 120 km/h while his skis went flying. Swiss Marco Odermatt, who narrowly avoided the fall, called it "a near-death experience."

Hermann Maier, the Austrian winner of four Olympic medals, said that sending women to race in the Streif

"is not a good idea, everyone has their own limit, for them the hardest course is Cortina."

Another former Austrian champion, Hans Knauss, Super G silver in Nagano 1998, who lost a year after a crash in the Streif in 2001, concluded that "emancipation would be out of place here." Germany's Markus Wasmeier, Olympic champion in Lillehammer thirty years ago, was even more direct:

"There are simply limits to what women can do and achieve. As a training descent, once upon a time individual women could do it. But not even one at race speed. Not even Lindsey Vonn. It would be suicide."

Daniel Albretch suffered in 2009 one of the most terrifying crashes in recent memory in the Streif.

Vonn's challenge

Actually, the American champion, who has had it all, from skiing, wanted to try: a year ago she went down the Streif, but was only let off at night. As if no one wanted to see that a sacrilege was being committed.

It was the only way to push the boundaries, to try to undermine the ghetto in which men have tried to lock women. But even then it was not a race at full speed: just a challenge to oneself and to history.

Rosi Mittermaier, German downhill legend, Olympic and world champion at Innsbruck 1976, said theatrically a few years ago that "only men can survive the Streif".

Sofia Goggia, who has never claimed to want to compete on the world's most famous slope, said worse, trying to answer those who asked her if there are homosexual athletes in skiing.

"Among women some do. Among men I would say no. They have to jump down the Streif in Kitzbühel and that's just a testosterone thing."

The usual stereotype of men with balls, the eternal reminder of testosterone. Or more simply what many think, from Maier to Mittermaier to Wasmeier: that men are worth a bit more.

Lindsey Vonn. They let her go down the slope in World Cup format, but at night.

The last woman to go down the Streif against the stopwatch

But it wasn't always like this: from the '30s onwards, races started to be organized on the Streif for women. The slope was designed for a time when skiing was not as fast as it is now, when the equipment s and artificial snow made the slope much more dangerous.

Christl Staffner Herbert, who will be 84 next April, was one of them. She was born in Kitzbühel itself, so the Streif was part of her family landscape. As a child she practiced downhill in leather boots and at the age of 16 she won her first race on the Stelvio. But in the early 1960s there was a turning point, when equipment and snow grooming recommended dividing the slopes by gender.

Christl was twenty-one years old in 1961 and was part of the Austrian women's national team that participated in the last race at Streif. Then the women's downhill races were moved to Bad Gastein despite protests from the female racers.

That last Streif Downhill was won by Traudl Hecher, who was 17 years old. After a brilliant career she married a theologian and became the mother of two ski champions: Elisabeth and Stephan Görgl.

Christl Staffner, on the other hand, went to Aspen, Colorado, to teach skiing lessons. Her students included Hollywood actors, famous singers and even Bob Kennedy, the president's brother. She was called "the Streif girl".

Another World Cup stadium where women are also not allowed to participate is the Lauberhorn in Wengen, Switzerland. It is the longest downhill course in the 'white circus', and they say that a few seconds after launching yourself, your thighs start to burn. There are still two long minutes of gritting your teeth ahead of you.

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