Laughing policeman

"It won't change me," he protested, but Austria will surely change towards him. When Strobl is asked how he keeps his privacy, he just shrugs: "I have no bodyguards; I'm not Hermann or Schwarzenegger." Now, though, even Arnie, who comes over like a star-struck groupie when he's hanging out with Maier, will be desperate to rub shoulders with him.

Yet Strobl had hitherto not even been as celebrated as his namesake, Pepi Strobl, in the Austrian team. After his victory, one American journalist asked him gravely how his brother's absence through injury had affected him here. Fritz had to politely point out that, er, as Pepi wasn't actually his brother, it hadn't affected him at all.

Even in Austria, they suspected he was just a nice guy who was destined to be an also-ran. He'd suffered a typical catalogue of injuries down the seasons, including torn knee ligaments, broken shoulder and foot, and had once reached such a low point that he quit the World Cup circuit completely to compete in the second division Europa Cup. Even his nickname "Fritz the Cat" was hardly in the "Hermannator" league.

Yet here at Mount Allen's aptlynamed 'Grizzly' course, where you must feel like you'll need nine lives when you fly out the hut and shoot like a skydiver from zero to 75mph within 10 seconds, Strobl could already sense his destiny as he seemed to purr down. Well, he'd even been allocated room 111 in the Olympic Village.

Rather charmingly, Olympic alpine director Herwig Demschar likes to rate the difficulty of downhill courses in terms of the size of testicles the skier needs if he wants to attack it. So what about Grizzly? Oh, big ones, he said. Hmm - well, let's just say this was the day Strobl's bottle was superior to anyone's.

One of his United States opponents noted that if he'd try to ski like Strobl on this horrendously steep, icy roller-coaster, there would have been an "opportunity for death".

Strobl just shrugged in response: "If you want to win, you have to risk something - and I did." Eberharter had just flown into the lead, but Strobl, making his real move when slicing along a fierce 200-yard sidehill near the summit, hurtled his 6ft 1in, 14-and-a-half st frame down the course 0.28sec quicker. Norway's Lasse Kjus split the Austrians for the silver.

After nine triumphs this winter, Eberharter showed no trace of misery as he tried to come to terms with defeat at just the wrong moment.

Although the result of the men's downhill was the shock of the Games so far, it only just topped that of 20-year-old Swiss, Simon Ammann, outjumping the two outstanding favourites, Germany's Sven Hannawald and the 'Flying Pole' Adam Malysz, in the 90m ski jump.

Then the hype surrounding Anni Friesinger, the glamorous German world champion who gains as much attention for removing her clothes as for her skating, was somewhat stripped away when she was pipped for gold by her compatriot, Claudia Pechstein. Pechstein broke her 3,000m world record to win gold at a third straight Games.

Yet Georg Hackl, the porky, beer-loving Bavarian luger who goes by the nickname of the "Flying Sausage", could go one better today when, starting fractionally behind Italian Armin Zoeggeler after two runs, he seeks to become the first winter Games athlete ever to win four Olympic golds in the same event. Should be tasty.

GALLERY: Salt Lake City highlights