Steve Locher
Steve Locher ( born September 19, 1967 in Salins ) is a retired Swiss ski racer. Locher was 17 years at the Swiss National Ski Team. He is an Olympic medalist and belonged in the 1990s to the best Giant Slalom skiers in the world.
Biography
Locher was born as one of four children of an electrical fitter. At the age of four he stood on skis for the first time. From 1975 he played first race for his hometown club SC Salins. 1985 managed to punch the leap into the Swiss National Ski Team and since the 1989/90 season, he takes as a professional part in the race for the World Cup. In his first season he managed the Super G in Val d'Isere, the first World Cup victory of his career.
With talent in both the technical as well as in the speed disciplines Locher has quickly developed into one of the best all - runner of the World Cup. His greatest successes came first then in combination ratings. In 1991 he was at the World Ski Championships in Saalbach -Hinterglemm Fifth, the year after he won at the Olympic Winter Games in Albertville, the bronze medal in the combination, the only alpine medal of the Swiss Olympic team. At the world championships 1993 he finished fifth again.
After his furious career stagnated beginning mid-1990s, the performance punch. The training effort seemed too high to reach the world leaders in all disciplines. Locher decided to forgo combination ratings and continue to focus on nurmehr his strongest disciplines, the giant slalom and Super -G. From 1996 he also trained only with the top runners Michael of Grünigen and Urs Kälin. The success proved him right: in the 1993/94 season he came in the overall standings of the World Cup giant slalom on rank 5 in 1996/97 season he reached fourth place even the best result of his career.
At the World Championships and Olympic Games was followed by a series of top rankings: 1996 in the Sierra Nevada in fifth in giant slalom, 1997 in Sestriere Fourth, Sixth, and finally in 1998 in Nagano in 1999 in Vail the bronze medal. In addition, he was Swiss champion in 1998 in the giant slalom.
According to the 2001 /02 season Locher retired from active ski racing. Overall, he played in his career 230 World Cup races, 53 times he was also placed in the top ten.
From 2005 Locher worked as coach of Valais Ski Association and the performance center Brig In spring 2010, he became coach of the newly created World Cup group 4 to Swiss-Ski. On 1 December 2010 he suffered a pelvic and a cervical fracture in a traffic accident near the Åre, Sweden. Together with three other Swiss ski coaches he was on his way to a European Cup races.