KITZBUEHEL, AUSTRIA — Olympic combined champion Ted Ligety reports regularly from the World Cup tour in collaboration with Denver Post ski writer John Meyer.
Kitzbuehel is always fun. Running that downhill is one of the highlights of the season.
The atmosphere in Kitzbuehel is unlike any other we we experience. It’s like the Super Bowl of ski racing. There’s always tens of thousands of people, they’re pumping music into the streets all night long and there are tons of people getting wasted.
It’s the most famous downhill track in the world, and it’s the only hill where I get a little bit scared at the start. Having been a ski racer for so many years, it’s really cool to get a little bit scared.
The scary parts are the first 20 seconds and a long sidehill just above the finish schuss.
Right out of the start you have to be on top of your game. You’re going more than 60 mph within the first six seconds. Then you have to snap off a high-speed turn before a 35-meter jump called the Mousefalle, where the hill just drops away from you like you’re dropping off a cliff. You land that in a compression at about 80 mph.
The sidehill at the bottom traverses across the bottom of the mountain before a right turn just above the finish. If you catch a little piece of snow wrong, or catch an edge, you’re tumbling toward the fences in a half a second. There’s no margin for error there.
Your left foot is higher than your right and there are some rolls, so you can only see 20 yards in front of you. You’re trying to stay as high on the traverse as you can, but you’re getting rattled around and the hill just keeps breaking away from you. It’s like skiing across a basketball.
This year I was really hoping to score World Cup points (top 30) in the downhill. I think that’s a hill where I should do well, for a guy whose forte is in the technical events, because it’s such a technical downhill. I just made a couple big mistakes and ended up 41st.
In the super-G I was mediocre, 24th. In slalom I skied well except for a big mistake coming over a roll and had to hike back up to make a gate.
I did think it was cool that Felix Neureuther of Germany won the slalom. His father Christian won the Kitzbuehel slalom in 1979, so now they’re the first father-son combo to win the same event there.
