updated 1:16 p.m. ET Feb. 18, 2006

SESTRIERE, Italy - Hermann Maier grabbed super-G silver at the Winter Olympics on Saturday almost five years after he almost lost a leg in a motorcycle accident and has no intention of giving his battered body a rest.

“I don’t think about (retiring), too little time has passed since my accident and there’s still a lot ahead of me,” the 33-year-old Austrian told reporters as he sat next to Kjetil Andre Aamodt, Norway’s remarkable gold medal winner.

“If at some point the effort gets too big and all the stuff around it gets too tiring and I need some peace then I’ll say it’s over, independently of whether I’m successful.”

Maier is used to fighting through illnesses and injuries. As a teenager, growth problems caused by a disease put a stop to his budding sports career and forced him to drop out of ski school.

He trained as a bricklayer instead, overcame the growth problems and had another go at skiing, working as a ski instructor like his father while also forging a career as an Alpine racer.

The chunky Austrian crashed horribly at the downhill competition at the Nagano Olympics but days later grabbed super-G and giant slalom gold. He missed Salt Lake City because of the motorcycle accident, and in Turin has been suffering from a cold.

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“Of course I’m really happy just to be at the Olympics, and that I have a medal makes it even nicer,” he said.

Unsurprisingly for someone who demands so much from his body, Maier is fiercely self-critical.

Mobbed by reporters at the foot of the Kandahar Banchetta course when it was clear he had won silver, he launched into an analysis of why he had not won gold.

“My feeling was that I didn’t really gather speed in the upper part, there were a lot of ruts...it was only in the last part that I realised I had to really  speed up,” he said.

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“It was a weird race, in the middle part I could have read the newspaper.”

With his eyes already on the next competition, Maier said his silver medal gave him confidence for the Olympic giant slalom on Monday when he wants to catch up with Aamodt, who won a record fourth Alpine ski gold medal on Saturday.

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