Sestriere, Italy – It will take a little less than a minute and 50 seconds to win the men’s Olympic downhill today and achieve immortality in the glamour event of alpine skiing, but chances are it will be lost in the first 20 seconds.
The first five turns and an elevator-shaft jump are situated on a steep, icy section that will severely test the technical prowess and courage of the world’s best downhillers.
A racer who executes those turns with precision and a willingness to risk life and limb will carry crucial speed onto the relatively flat middle section of the mountain. Racers who make mistakes on the upper pitch will carry less speed onto the flat, magnifying the consequences of their errors and probably eliminating themselves from contention.
“It’s an in-your-face first five turns,” said U.S. Ski Team downhill coach John McBride of Old Snowmass.
American Daron Rahlves showed everyone how to do it in Thursday’s training run, recording the fastest split at the first intermediate timing and leading the rest of the way to win the run. His primary rival, Austrian Michael Walchhofer, was second fastest on the top section and finished second.
“It’s important to get those turns dialed and get a flow for the whole run,” Rahlves said Saturday. “Everywhere you’ve got to look for speed. If I could be ahead up there, it’s going to help me bring some speed onto the flat section and (then) just kind of ski the hill. There’s a lot of terrain you’ve got to be dialed in with.”
Rahlves is renowned for his ability to carve precise turns on steep, technical terrain, which he has proven by winning on the world’s most difficult downhills.
“The top is much like some of the more difficult downhills we see in Kitzbuehel (Austria) and Bormio (Italy) in that the snow is hard, it’s rattley,” McBride said. “It’s right in line with the kind of stuff Daron loves.”
Top speeds should be around 80 mph on the 2-mile course, which drops 2,998 feet from a barren mountaintop through a gladed area and then into a forest at the bottom of the mountain where it steepens again. Swiss great Bernhard Russi, who has designed every Olympic downhill since 1988, modified an existing track here for the 1997 world championships.
“This one, it’s nothing special,” Russi said. “It’s a well-balanced downhill with difficult turns, with difficult terrain. It’s really the terrain that is important here. It’s the way it is prepared.”
Because the middle section is relatively flat, course preparers shaped terrain features – bumps, rolls, ripples and compressions – in the snow to make it more challenging.
“They’ve done a great job of putting terrain in this downhill, which has made fairly moderate terrain very active,” McBride said. “You need to be ahead of terrain, really anticipate and move well with the terrain, not only through glide turns but through more difficult turns, especially as you enter the forest at the bottom.”
Without those manmade terrain features, the middle section would have rewarded good gliders and the racers with the best skis and base preparation.
“There’s a lot of rolls so there’s action all the time,” Norway’s Aksel Lund Svindal said. “It’s never straight. There’s always either a roll, a jump or a turn.”
Walchhofer said he believes racers should let their skis run in the flats instead of fighting too hard to stay on a preconceived line because hitting their edges will slow them down.
“I think the important thing is to have a good feeling on this part, especially the long turns,” Walchhofer said. “You need a lot of feeling – ski smooth.”
Below the flats the slope turns steep and icy again with big, sweeping high-speed turns – Rahlves loves those – many of them blind.
Most racers and World Cup insiders believe the course has enough technical difficulty to ensure the winner will be one of the elite: Rahlves, Walchhofer, Austrian great Hermann Maier or defending champion Fritz Strobl of Austria. When Bode Miller is mentioned, it’s only as an afterthought.
“There are three or four racers,” said Walchhofer, “if they have the perfect run, then they are the winners: Rahlves, Fritz Strobl and hopefully me.”
