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Austria's "The Herminator"



Austria's "The Herminator"
Reading Level
     edHelper's suggested reading level:   grades 6 to 8
     Flesch-Kincaid grade level:   6.82

Vocabulary
     challenging words:    trademark, celebrity, scuba, recovery, busted, disappointment, victory, competitive, prove, hometown, fans, nickname, ability, during, imagine, winning
     content words:    Hermann Maier, Winter Olympics, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake Games, World Cup, By December


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Austria's "The Herminator"
By Ekaterina Zhdanova-Redman
  

1     Try to imagine yourself as the best skier in your country. Not only are you the best, you have legions of fans, and you're thought of as almost a god in your country. People follow you to all your competitions (you've won dozens) and cheer you on to victory. You love to ski, and you love to win. So when it comes time for the Olympics, what do you? Go to compete? Of course!
 
2     Not Hermann Maier. During the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Austrian skier and national celebrity Maier was in the Bahamas. If you guessed he wasn't skiing in the Bahamas, you'd be right. He was on a scuba diving vacation. And you'd also be right if you guessed there was a big reason for Maier not to be at the Salt Lake Games. That reason was a terrible motorcycle accident a few months earlier.
 
3     Maier was born in Flachau, Austria, where he learned to ski at the age of three. By the time he was six, he was racing, and by the time he was a teenager, he had won several junior races. At 15, he was invited to a famous ski school in Austria. He studied there for a year before being sent home for being too skinny.

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