Hermann Maier
Alberto Tomba
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Hermann Maier leads 3 of 5 categories. Our all-time ranking places Hermann Maier at #6 and Alberto Tomba at #8.
The case for Hermann Maier
The Herminator, a bricklayer rejected by the Austrian ski academy as a teenager for being too small, who arrived on the World Cup at 23 and immediately rebuilt the sport's idea of how hard a racer could attack. Maier won 54 World Cup races and four overall titles in 1998, 2000, 2001 and 2004, and his 2,000 points in 1999-2000 stood as the men's record for 23 years. His defining week came at Nagano in 1998: a crash in the downhill that launched him through two safety fences at over 100 km/h and was replayed worldwide, followed three days later by super-G gold and giant slalom gold. In August 2001 a motorcycle accident nearly cost him his right leg; he missed two seasons, returned in 2003, won the super-G globe in his comeback season and the overall title the year after. Nobody in the sport's history has recovered from more.
The case for Alberto Tomba
Tomba la Bomba took a sport followed by Alpine villages and made it a national event in Italy. He won 50 World Cup races — 35 slaloms and 15 giant slaloms — and three Olympic golds, taking both technical events at Calgary in 1988 and defending the giant slalom at Albertville in 1992, which made him the first alpine skier to win the same event at two Games. He medalled at three consecutive Olympics. His overall Crystal Globe came late, in 1995, and he closed with a slalom and giant slalom double at the 1996 world championships in Sierra Nevada. The numbers understate him: Tomba raced with a physical, aggressive line built on unusual leg strength, and he turned second runs into theatre, routinely coming from four or five places back. Italian television audiences for his slaloms reached levels the sport has never seen since.