Ski/Snow Media-Related Snippets

Having won 3 gold medals at the 1956 Winter Olympics in Cortina, and followed it up with the same feat two years later at the World Championships in Bad Gastein, the Austrian legend's mother famously declared that "Toni has enough medals now. It's time he started making money". And make money he did. But not just through the channels normally associated with retired skiers such as opening a hotel or starting a clothing business. He did those as well, but Toni was a bit different to the rest and also forged a successful career as a singer and an actor. Classic Euro-films from the 60's such as Ski Fever, The Blue from the Sky, The Lucky Strike, 12 Girls and 1 Man, and er, Lost Treasure of the Incas may well have bypassed British film-goers but they were popular around Europe and even in the Far East, all adding to the Sailer coffers and the Sailer legend.

Following his success at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Nagano, where he grabbed two gold medals in the Super-G and Giant Slalom, Hermann Maier aka 'the Herminator' was invited onto prime-time American TV as a guest on Jay Leno's Tonight Show on the NBC channel. Also on the show that night was compatriot (before he became an American anyway) Arnold 'Arnie' Schwarzenegger. Half an hour of hilarious Lederhosen-fuelled fun ensued.

Saas-Fee was the main location for the video of Wham!'s classic hit-single "Last Christmas". Good old George Michael (looking about as 1980's as it's possible to look) and Andrew Ridgeley clamber aboard a retro Saas Fee cable-car with their gear and head up into the mountains for some Christmas fun. Wham! Last Christmas YouTube video.