{"id":2150,"date":"2016-02-10T13:41:20","date_gmt":"2016-02-10T12:41:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oatridge.co.uk\/nic\/?p=2150"},"modified":"2016-02-10T13:41:20","modified_gmt":"2016-02-10T12:41:20","slug":"switzerlands-greatest-skier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.oatridge.co.uk\/nic\/features\/switzerlands-greatest-skier\/","title":{"rendered":"Pirmin Zurbriggen Switzerland&#8217;s Greatest Skier"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When I was a younger skier, glued to the BBC&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/programmes\/b006v8fc\" target=\"_blank\">BBC Ski Sunday<\/a> for its dreadfully short season, the most successful ski racer of the time was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.zurbriggen.ch\/pirmin\/\" target=\"_blank\">Pirmin Zurbriggen<\/a>, He seemed unstoppable and almost single-handed kept the Austrian challenge at bay. He retired at the peak of his career aged 27 to return to his roots in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.swisswintersports.co.uk\/saastal.php\" target=\"_blank\">Saastal<\/a>, in German-speaking <a href=\"http:\/\/www.swisswintersports.co.uk\/valais.php\" target=\"_blank\">Wallis\/Valais<\/a>.<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.swisswintersports.co.uk\/images\/saas-fee.jpg\" alt=\"Saastal\" \/><br \/>\nDuring his career he won he won four World Cup titles, an Olympic gold medal and 9 World Championship medals. Who knows what else he would have won if he had continued.<\/p>\n<p>I know his family runs a hotel in his home town and rumour has it that if you stay there you have a chance to explore the local slopes with the great man. Anyway, the reason I bring him up is that there is an interview with him at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.powder.com\/stories\/interviews\/pirmin-zurbriggen\/#EQtFXRHf0e5BjRgp.97\" target=\"_blank\">Powder magazine<\/a>, including some footage of him racing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I was a younger skier, glued to the BBC&#8217;s BBC Ski Sunday for its dreadfully short season, the most successful ski racer of the time was Pirmin Zurbriggen, He seemed unstoppable and almost single-handed kept the Austrian challenge at bay. He retired at the peak of his career aged 27 to return to his &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.oatridge.co.uk\/nic\/features\/switzerlands-greatest-skier\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Pirmin Zurbriggen Switzerland&#8217;s Greatest Skier&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[85,92],"tags":[62,37,113,40,251,284],"class_list":["post-2150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","category-switzerland-2","tag-hotel","tag-ski","tag-swiss","tag-switzerland","tag-world-championship","tag-world-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oatridge.co.uk\/nic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oatridge.co.uk\/nic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oatridge.co.uk\/nic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oatridge.co.uk\/nic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oatridge.co.uk\/nic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2150"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.oatridge.co.uk\/nic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2151,"href":"http:\/\/www.oatridge.co.uk\/nic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2150\/revisions\/2151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oatridge.co.uk\/nic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oatridge.co.uk\/nic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oatridge.co.uk\/nic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}