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}} Ulrike Maier (22 October 1967 – 29 January 1994) was a World Cup alpine ski racer from Austria, a two-time World Champion in Super-G. Born in Rauris, Salzburg, where her father ran a ski school, Maier won the Super-G gold medal at the World Championships in both 1989 and 1991. She also took home the giant slalom silver medal in the 1991 event. Her first of five World Cup wins came in November 1992 and she had 21 podiums 59 top ten finishes in her World Cup career. ==Accident== Two weeks prior to the 1994 Winter Olympics, the women's World Cup was in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, in late January. The downhill on the classic Kandahar course at Garmisch Classic was held on Saturday, January 29, following an overnight snowfall. In a narrow part of the lower course less than twenty seconds from the finish, Maier's right ski caught an inside edge at , possibly from a patch of soft snow, and caused a violent crash which broke her neck. She died of her injuries shortly after being evacuated to the hospital in nearby Murnau. At age 26, she had thought to retire at the end of the 1994 season, due to a small performance decay that caused her not to perform well both in 1992 Albertville Olympic Games and in 1993 Morioka Shizukuishi World Championships. However, she had bounced back from that crisis winning two GS in 1994 season and claiming podium in the two Super G of Cortina. Following these results, she was reconsidering her decision in the days before the fateful downhill run, planning to continue until the 1995 World Championships in Spain. Unlike most other fatal skiing accidents, her crash happened during a live television broadcast. Maier was survived by her daughter Melanie (b. 1989)〔 and was buried in her home village of Rauris, where thousands attended her funeral. Teammate and close friend Anita Wachter wore Maier's world championship medals in the procession. Initially it was claimed that her death was caused by hitting a wooden timing post. Based on that claim, Maier's fiancé Hubert Schweighhofer criticized the organizers of the race and filed suit against them. However, several months later the court found that Maier actually did not hit the timing post with her head, but probably broke her neck by crashing into a pile of snow on the border of the race course.〔(). International Herald Tribune 25 November 1994.〕 The court did not find any negligence from the organizers and dismissed the suit. Manslaughter charges against two FIS race officials were dropped after a settlement was reached in 1996. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Ulrike Maier」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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