WHISTLER, British Columbia — Her results the past three seasons have left little doubt Lindsey Vonn is the best female ski racer in the world, but it turns out she has a top-secret edge on her competitors.
Nicotine on her skis.
Vonn’s ski technician, Austrian Heinz Haemmerle, is considered one of the world’s shrewdest. Vonn calls him “Magic Heinzi,” but she also calls him “the worst chain-smoker you will ever see.” So there’s a secret ingredient on those rocket-fast skis of hers besides wax and space-age fluorocarbons.
“He hot-boxes himself in the ski room,” Vonn says. “It’s a secret we don’t want anyone to know. It’s the smoke that gets into the equipment.”
She’s kidding, of course.
But in a sport where hundredths of seconds separate gold and silver, the way skis are prepared can be the difference between winning and finishing out of the running — even for a racer as dominant as Vonn. The significance of ski preparation is most pronounced in the downhill, Vonn’s best event, and the difficulty of preparing for Whistler’s highly variable conditions is the inside story of the downhills here.
Less than a 10th of a second separated the gold and bronze medalists Monday in the men’s downhill. The top 15 finished within a second of each other. American Steve Nyman finished 1.4 seconds behind — and was 20th.
The same thing easily could happen in the women’s downhill today, so having “Magic Heinzi” in her corner is a huge source of comfort for Vonn.
“I never have to question whether my skis are fast,” Vonn says. “He’s always spot-on, he always has everything nailed down, my edges are always perfect.”
Whistler has been a nightmare for ski techs because it has been snowing on upper sections of the downhill courses and raining on the lower parts. They have to decide which conditions to emphasize in their preparation, but it’s a compromise.
“The freeze line is exactly at the middle of the downhill,” former French downhill great Luc Alphand said. “It’s a bet, from the technicians. You have to gamble a little bit.”
Haemmerle has been to Whistler many times, back when the men regularly raced World Cups here in the 1980s and early ’90s.
“Having him as my serviceman is the best possible scenario,” Vonn says, “because he probably has the most experience on the World Cup tour.”
There are many variables that make skis “fast” or “slow.” Minute differences in the manufacturing process, such as the temperature and humidity at the factory, can make models of the same ski vary slightly in performance. The wood structure in the ski can be slightly different, the base material can be slightly different from ski to ski.
Technicians grind different kinds of “structure,” or texture, into the base material for different skiing conditions. Then skis are tested to determine which ones work best in which conditions.
“The more runs you have from the testing, you are knowing which ski is running (well) in which temperatures, which structure is running in which temperatures,” Haemmerle said.
He shipped 20 pairs of downhill skis here for Vonn, plus 10 pairs of super-G skis, 15 slalom pairs and 10 giant slalom pairs. Then he decides which wax and edge preparation to choose for the conditions that day.
Vonn switched from Rossignol skis to Head this past offseason after Rossignol cut athlete retainers 50 percent across the board because of the economic downturn. Haemmerle had been assigned to Bode Miller, but Miller was considering retirement, so Head reassigned him to Vonn.
“I trust him completely, and that’s something you need to have,” Vonn says.
John Meyer: 303-954-1616 or jmeyer@denverpost.com
Alpine shuffle
Weather has played havoc with the alpine events, as only one race, the men’s downhill, has yet to be contested. The revised schedule:
Today: Women’s downhill
Thursday: Women’s super-combined
Friday: Men’s super-G
Saturday: Women’s super-G
Sunday: Men’s super-combined
Feb. 23: Men’s giant slalom
Feb. 24: Women’s giant slalom
Feb. 26: Women’s slalom
Feb. 27: Men’s slalom
