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Luc Alphand, daredevil on snow and sand
(China Daily/Agencies)
Updated: 2006-01-17 06:07
From ski slopes to sand dunes, speed and daring have always been the driving
force for Luc Alphand.
Alphand won the Dakar Rally on Sunday nine years after lifting the crystal
globe of the Alpine skiing World Cup.
The long and boisterous career of the French daredevil started in Briancon,
in the heart of the Alps, and in a washing machine.
"It was at the time of the lunar missions and me and my brother wanted to go
to the moon. The washing machine looked like it came from outer space, so my
brother closed the door behind me", he told journalists before the start of the
race.
"My brother did not know how to open to the door but thankfully he didn't
switch the machine on and my mother was not too far away."
Son of a mountain guide, the young Luc started skiing as soon he could walk,
two years after his birth on August 6, 1965.
He won his first high standard race at 11 and clinched the downhill world
junior title in Sestriere in 1983 but soon discovered the ski slopes were not a
bed of roses.
The first part of his skiing career was plagued by injuries: fracture of the
wrist and torn thumb ligaments in 1987, open fracture of the fibula in 1988,
torn ligaments in the right knee in 1989, broken vertebra in 1990.
In 1993, he came out of a spectacular fall at Whistler Mountain in the US
with a tear to the abdomen and detached knee ligaments but refused to bow out.
A year later, he won his first downhill at Val d'Isere and, in the winter of
1995, mastered the two World Cup downhill races on the "Streif" run at
Kitzbuehel in Austria.
He was 29 and his career was just starting.
After being ranked number one in the world in men's
downhill in 1995 and 1996, Alphand became in 1997 the first Frenchman to win the
overall World Cup since Jean-Claude Killy in 1968.
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