ASPEN — Aspen has been a regular stop on the World Cup with only occasional interruptions since the late 1970s, but there’s a special buzz emanating from this year’s event.
For the first time in nearly 14 years, a World Cup downhill will be held on Ajax, one of America’s most historic race venues. Ski Club Vail product Lindsey Vonn is beginning her seventh season as a World Cup downhiller, and she finally gets to race her best event in Colorado.
“The top section is really nice; there’s some gliding in it,” Vonn said after Wednesday’s training run. “In the middle section there’s some nice, super-G tuck turns, and in the bottom there’s a bunch of technical sections. It’s really fun.”
Aspen used to be an annual destination for the downhill men. Franz Klammer won here in 1976, the year he won the Olympic downhill at Innsbruck. Bill Johnson won here in 1984, a couple of weeks after he became America’s first Olympic downhill champion. AJ Kitt had two apparent wins taken from him when World Cup officials stopped races with him in the lead, citing unsafe course conditions.
But the men stopped running downhill here in 1994, and Beaver Creek became the home of “America’s Downhill” in 1997. The women have run downhill here only four times — and not since 1988.
“It’s been a long time coming,” said Aspen native Dave Stapleton, a 48-year-old former U.S. Ski Team racer who foreran the course Wednesday. “Everybody likes watching downhill. It’s the most exciting alpine event there is.”
The course is essentially the same the men ran, except the women will come through Snow Bowl instead of skiing Aztec and Spring Pitch. Former U.S. Ski Team downhiller Chris Puckett, who lives in Aspen, estimated he hit 85 mph on Snow Bowl when he foreran the course.
“It feels really fast to me,” Puckett said.
Vonn posted the fastest time in Wednesday’s training run but confessed to missing a gate in the finish.
“I came in there hauling so much (speed),” Vonn said. “There was a huge compression, I got squashed and my edge caught. I pretty much was going with one ski in the air, heading right toward the timing shack, the complete opposite direction (from) the finish. I pulled it off, but I did miss the last gate.”
Olympic giant slalom champion Julia Mancuso of Olympic Valley, Calif., was sixth fastest.
“There’s some pretty big turns, and it’s fast going into them,” Mancuso said. “The hill has so many different directions and undulations. It’s really fast and open, then it funnels into a difficult section (with) a big turn. There’s a lot of places where you have to be patient and stick to your line, then dive down the hill.”
Vonn said the course almost skis like a super-G.
“You have to have really good tactics and be really clean with initiation (of the turn),” Vonn said. “You have to trust yourself and stand on your ski really hard because there are lot of turns where you can’t afford to be wishy-washy. You’ve got to be really exact about where you want to put your turn and stick it in the correct line. Otherwise, you’re going to lose a lot of time.”
John Meyer: 303-954-1616 or jmeyer@denverpost.com
