Beaver Creek – The U.S. Ski Team has had some of its most glorious days on the Birds of Prey in recent years, but Thursday surely will rank as one of its most frustrating.
The home team was in superb position to place two men on the World Cup podium in super combined after Bode Miller turned in the fastest run and Olympic combined champion Ted Ligety skied surprisingly well in the morning downhill. Several combined standouts, most notably Austria’s Benjamin Raich, were out of contention, clearing the way for the Americans.
But with shadows lengthening and sunlight fading, the Americans fell short in the afternoon slalom.
Ligety, a slalom specialist, had a sub-par run and finished 10th. Miller, who lost his knack for slalom long ago, spun off the course in the afternoon run for yet another DNF in a career littered with them. Miller’s gaffe handed the win to Norway’s Aksel Lund Svindal.
What made Miller’s performance especially baffling was that he seemingly had the race won, if only he finished. He was more than two seconds faster than Svindal in the downhill, a huge cushion to carry into a 52-second slalom.
Former U.S. Ski Team coach Bob Beattie called Miller “poetry in slow motion.” University of Colorado ski coach Richard Rokos joked he could have won the race skiing the slalom backward.
“Goofy, goofy,” Rokos said. “Such a disappointment for all the people here.”
Miller left the scene without comment, as is his habit, leaving others to draw their own conclusions about what happened.
“He pinched a gate,” teammate Steve Nyman said. “He’s notorious for that. It kicked his feet back, took his tempo off and he was out of the course. He pushes the line, and it works sometimes. When it does, he destroys everybody. When it doesn’t, he’s not there.”
U.S combined coach John McBride blamed Miller’s ongoing equipment issues: adjusting to new equipment and adjusting the equipment to him.
“He’s been having a little trouble with his slalom gear,” McBride said. “His skis aren’t clean in the snow. That’s not really an unusual problem, what happened today.”
With a two-second advantage on one slalom run, most racers would have skied conservatively, but Miller has always shunned that approach.
“I think it’s his style,” McBride said. “If you told the guy to take it easy, he wouldn’t.”
Because Miller’s misadventure was almost predictable, Ligety’s finish might have been the bigger disappointment. Almost exclusively a slalom/giant slalom racer until the Turin Olympics, Ligety has had very little World Cup downhill experience. He’d never raced downhill on the Birds of Prey before Thursday.
For him to finish 11th in the downhill, faster than almost all of the slalom racers, seemingly set him up going into the afternoon session – especially on a mountain where he earned his first slalom podium last year.
But Ligety has yet to find his rhythm in slalom this season because of a broken hand sustained while training in October. “A little tentative, I guess,” Ligety said. “I just didn’t arc anything. I had no chance.”
It was painful for Ligety to consider the opportunity that had gone awry after such a solid downhill run.
“It kills me,” Ligety said. “It’s pretty ridiculous, actually. Slalom has always been my bread-and-butter event, so when I’m kind of suffering there, it’s definitely a little worrisome or definitely a little frustrating.”
At least Ligety has an excuse. Holding a pole has been problematic ever since the injury, suffered on an Austrian glacier.
“I mentally hold back a little bit, because the main way I get back on the course when I start making big mistakes is I have that pole plant,” Ligety said. “I don’t have that right now. If I make a mistake, I’m out of the course. I just have no recovery mechanism right now.”
World Cup men’s super combined
At Beaver Creek Birds of Prey course
(Downhill, slalom times in parentheses)
1. Aksel Lund Svindal, Norway, 2 minutes, 06.74 seconds (1:15.10-51.64).
2. Marc Berthod, Switzerland, 2:06.93 (1:14.25-52.68).
3. Rainer Schoenfelder, Austria, 2:07.11 (1:15.91-51.20).
4. Peter Fill, Italy, 2:07.21 (1:14.41-52.80).
5. Ales Gorza, Slovenia, 2:07.69 (1:15.20-52.49).
6. Ondrej Bank, Czech Republic, 2:07.72 (1:15.48-52.24).
7. Jean-Baptiste Grange, France, 2:07.84 (1:15.47-52.37).
8. Didier Defago, Switzerland, 2:08.42 (1:14.17-54.25).
9. Niklas Rainer, Sweden, 2:08.47 (1:15.63-52.84).
10. Ted Ligety, United States, 2:08.54 (1:14.88-53.66).
11. Pierre Paquin, France, 2:08.69 (1:15.91-52.78).
12. Francois Bourque, Canada, 2:08.82 (1:14.35-54.47).
13. Steve Nyman, United States, 2:08.95 (1:14.23-54.72).
14. Lars Myhre, Norway, 2:09.00 (1:16.22-52.78).
15. Jens Byggmark, Sweden, 2:09.07 (1:16.90-52.17).
16. Patrick Staudacher, Italy, 2:09.78 (1:14.39-55.39).
17. Mario Scheiber, Austria, 2:09.80 (1:14.07-55.73).
18. Christoph Gruber, Austria, 2:10.11 (1:13.47-56.64).
19. Christoph Dreier, Austria, 2:11.30 (1:17.31-53.99).
20. Andrej Sporn, Slovenia, 2:11.37 (1:14.55-56.82).
21. Marco Sullivan, United States, 2:11.38 (1:15.18-56.20).
22. Romed Baumann, Austria, 2:11.82 (1:15.57-56.25).
23. Natko Zrncic-Dim, Croatia, 2:12.17 (1:17.26-54.91).
24. Florian Eisath, Italy, 2:12.61 (1:16.80-55.81).
25. Filip Trejbal, Czech Republic, 2:12.87 (1:18.33-54.54).
26. Davide Simoncelli, Italy, 2:13.09 (1:17.55-55.54).
27. Jimmy Cochran, United States, 2:13.15 (1:19.11-54.04).
28. Noel Baxter, Britain, 2:14.76 (1:16.44-58.32).
DNF slalom run – Benjamin Raich, Austria; Michael Walchhofer, Austria; Bode Miller, United States.
