Truls Dæhli about Fred Anton Maier: That’s why he’s my hero – VG

COMMENT: No one is bigger than the heroes of childhood. That explains why I never get a bigger hero than Fred Anton Maier.

Background: Fred Anton Maier died

As a child of the fifties I went skating. Length Race Skating. Most of Hamar did then, there were annual school championships with several hundred participants in each class, weekly club run with many spectators had their own stopwatches, and everyone lived in a naive and delicious delusion that there was a sport that was larger, finer and more important. The best skaters were our gods.

VG sports commentator Truls Dæhli.

Photo: Frode Hansen , VG

Not only because they went fast, won and did us proud. They set world records, which meant they went fastest in the world, and it was so incredibly large that admiration we bar was boundless. I cut out grainy images in black and white from the newspapers and made my own heltebok, and I was not alone. Happiness was never greater than when it was printed a picture of Fred Anton Maier, preferably in the end of the last turn, with the innermost leg in full thrust, and the concentrated gaze straight ahead. There was something majestic over Maier. There was no one who went rogue as great as he.

Besides, he had everything a little skater at the beginning of the 60s so very wanted, but did not. The white devil hat, the white turtleneck sweater with red and blue stripes on the collar, blue leotard, all of the new and modern fabric called crepe and that was to get hold of any place outside Oslo, and so represented Fred Anton Maier all respects both the perfect and the unattainable.

That he skated in an era of white snow banks in beautiful bows on polished ice, did not make him less of a national hero. Outdoor skating sport was our winter and our sport, and it was the long distances that applied. The longer, the better, and Fred Anton Maier was an imposing figure, tall and athletic, which was devoid of speed and made for the long and tough. He had to catch up with everything on the last distance, and that was when we set clear. Could he manage to take in 21.2 seconds at 10,000 meters? Could it go?

It was not every time, but often. Maier went happily smoothly the first few rounds, began to eat a second or a half per game eventually, before the beast in him woke at five past. It was in those magic moments, when he passed on lap so good that he ate both three, four and five seconds, that Fred Anton Maier was the big hero for everyone who listened. We did not understand that someone could go so fast, but he did it constantly, and then there was something about the name too. For there was only one named Fred Anton Maier.

Only one in the world.