VANCOUVER — The Hermannator is gone, headed to play soccer with his old club team in his hometown of Flachau. And Renate Goetschl has left too, to have a baby.

As the World Cup alpine ski season starts in earnest next week with the downhill and Super G openers for men and women in Lake Louise, Alta., the powerful Austrian team, currently training at Sun Peaks Resort outside of Kamloops, B.C., is in transition.

Superstars Hermann Maier, 37, and Goetschl, 34, who had been the skiing-mad country’s most successful active skiers with six Olympic medals, 15 world championship medals and 100 World Cup wins between them, both retired in the off-season.

“The biggest difference for me, now I am the oldest racer,” downhill ace Michael Walchhofer, 34, joked Thursday in a phone interview from Sun Peaks. “But yes, Hermann was always a good teammate, a leader of the team.”

On the women’s side, the loss of Goetschl was followed in late October with the news that Nicole Hosp, 25, the overall World Cup winner in the 2006-07 season, would miss all of this season, including the 2010 Olympics, after suffering a torn ACL in the opening giant slalom in Soelden, Austria.

“Of course, we miss Renate,” said Andrea Fischbacher, who was 10th in the overall World Cup standings last season and picked up a third (Super G) and fifth (downhill) at Lake Louise. “We have a good team, a much younger team of girls and we will try our best, but she was a leader in the team. She skied all disciplines and if you had a question, you could always ask her.”

Last month, Peter Schrocknadel, head of the Austrian Skiing Federation, said he didn’t think the loss of the two legends would have a big impact on the team’s performance this season, noting that while there was always a buzz around Maier in particular, “he didn’t reach the podium many times at the end of his career.”

He did admit, however, that it would be tough to replace the pair’s leadership abilities and personalities.

“The teams’ leaders are gone, so we’ll have to find new ones,” said Schrocknadel. “We’ve got enough good skiers, and they’ll go their way.”

The Austrians are hardly wanting for elite-level talent. The country that has dominated alpine skiing at the Olympic Games — 14 medals alone at Turin in 2006 — churns out fearless speed demons and aggressive gate-bangers like it once produced terrific composers.

On the men’s side, Austria had seven skiers in the top 23 overall World Cup standings in 2008-09, including Walchhofer in eighth and the marvellous Benjamin Raich, who was second for the fourth time.

“Benjamin is a superstar like Hermann, who a lot of silverware at world championships and Olympic Games,” Schrocknadel said of the gold medallist in giant slalom and slalom at Turin.

“He might not be as spectacular, but he is a leader as Hermann was, and this should not be forgotten.”

Walter Gradwohl, the men’s downhill and Super G coach, said on Thursday that Maier’s loss won’t be “a problem for the guys,” but will be felt by the coaches, who could always rely on a guy who won both in the speed and technical events to provide precise information on the little nuances of a race hill.

“If he was on the start, all the coaches would be waiting to hear from him on the radios when he finished,” said Gradwohl. “Now we will see what’s going on without Hermann.”

The Austrians have been using Sun Peaks as a pre-season training base since 2005 after securing an exclusive arrangement with the resort. It spent about $3 million on snow-making, ski-run modifications and a chair lift that services the area of the mountain the Austrians use.

The crisp, dry snow conditions are very similar to what they get for the season-openers at Lake Louise, Beaver, Colo., and Aspen, Colo., and the skiers and coaches don’t have to battle other teams for training times. They also get to work and relax in relative anonymity, away from the distractions of the European media and the adoring public and the demands of sponsors.

“It is a good quality place and a good partner,” says Gradwohl. “Before (in Colorado) we maybe had one run open and 100 guys (from other nations) have to train and it was very strict. Maybe we have two hours in morning, Canadians 9 to 11, U.S., team from 11 to 3, this is too much pressure. If it snowed, we missed our training session. Now, we have the hill the whole day . . . we can simulate a race atmosphere.”

For the resort, it is also a good arrangement. With the Austrians bringing a full team of coaches, ski techs and support staff, the resort gets a boost in hotel bookings and restaurant meals in the early-winter shoulder season and a good chunk of publicity.

The Austrians will also use Sun Peaks in early February as a base camp for their Olympic preparations.

Before then, however, there’s the very busy World Cup season, one Gradwohl is anxious to get started. While Maier, who won four career Super G races at Lake Louise, including last season, is gone, younger talent like Mario Scheiber, 26, and with 20 World Cup podiums to his credit, and Hans Grugger are returning after missing nearly all of last season due to injury.

And on the women’s side, while Goetschl and Hosp won’t be around, veteran Marlies Schild, who missed all of last season with a broken shinbone, is back.

“I feel not really bad,” says Gradwohl. “We have a strong team. Can we get 14 (medals) at Whistler? It’s difficult to say. We are focused to try to get a medal in each discipline.”

Vancouver Sun

gkingston@vancouversun.com