Olympic combined champion Ted Ligety reports regularly from the World Cup in collaboration with Denver Post ski writer John Meyer.
Reiteralm, Austria – There’s virtually no snow over here. It’s kind of comical how little snow there is and the lengths we have to go to train and race.
Last week we trained slalom for a few days on a little patch of snow in a pasture where we were driving each other to the start in automobiles. It’s pretty sad.
We did race a super combined – super-G and slalom – here Sunday. You go up the gondola and it’s completely green underneath you for the entire gondola ride. You get to the top and there’s a patch of snow where there’s a race course and one slope for free skiing. That’s all there is.
The Reiteralm hill is super easy for super-G, just totally flat out of the start. There are a couple of little breakovers that are about one gate long. It’s just crazy how simple the hill is, but it’s the best replacement they could find for the super-G originally scheduled for Val d’Isere, France.
That super-easy hill wasn’t so easy to ski Sunday in the
super-G portion of the race, though, because the snow was so gnarly and bumpy the entire way down. It snowed on top of a hard, icy layer, and it totally rotted out. It was total death cookies the whole way. There were times when I was like, “Whoa, I should just pull out because this is not going to be sweet,” but that’s how everybody was feeling. It was one of those races in which we all looked horrible.
Things obviously worked out for me. I wound up finishing 23rd in the super-G, fourth in the slalom portion and fourth overall.
Having a good slalom was a good sign for my form, which I’ve been trying to get back since I broke my hand in October. I’ve been struggling a little bit in slalom, so it’s good that I’m getting a little better every day.
This week we’re going to the U.S. Ski Team’s new training headquarters in Trento, Italy, for a few days. Then the speed skiers will race super-G and downhill Friday and Saturday at Val Gardena, Italy. I will race giant slalom Sunday and slalom Monday in Alta Badia, Italy.
It has snowed there, but it’s still looking sketchy.
They barely had any snow until the most recent storm a few days ago, and there’s still a possibility those races won’t happen.
