BEAVER CREEK — The U.S. Ski Team went into Saturday’s World Cup super-G with two men who claimed medals in that discipline at the Vancouver Olympics, but that only made the outcome harder to take.
Silver medalist Bode Miller went off course just above the Screech Owl jump, as did bronze medalist Andrew Weibrecht and two of their teammates, Marco Sullivan and Ted Ligety.
Steve Nyman, pretty much an afterthought because of his late start number (57), was the only American to crack the top 30, finishing 25th.
“It’s amazing when you cheer for 25th,” said a gloomy Bob Beattie, who created the U.S. Ski Team concept in the 1960s.
Georg Streitberger of Austria won, 0.11 of a second ahead of Adrien Theaux of France.
The top U.S. racers failed to set up properly for a 70-mph turn, and their momentum made it impossible to negotiate the gate.
“You go in, over a roll,” Weibrecht said. “You’re trying to hit the backside of that roll, but get far enough over the hill. It’s also banked, so the turn wants to pull you inside. That’s kind of what happened to all of us. We were going at an 11 o’clock angle off that little roll, instead of 12 o’clock.”
Miller, the first of the Americans to race, gave teammates a course report via walkie-talkie, but it didn’t help.
“Bode’s report said to really move well over the terrain before it,” Wei-brecht said. “I felt like I did that. Somewhere in between, I maybe didn’t get enough depth into the turn, where I could bring it back at the right angle.”
Ligety said the U.S. racers failed to appreciate the difficulty of that turn when they inspected the course before the race. In downhill, racers have official training runs before race day, but not in the other three disciplines.
“The coaches were giving us hints, but we didn’t have the full information on how much you had to set it up,” Ligety said. “It’s a bummer, but that’s super-G.”
Nyman came up with a plan for that turn during inspection, and the fate of his teammates only confirmed his strategy.
“I just stuck with my plan,” Nyman said. “I thought I had a good inspection and was confident in what I needed to do.”
Streitberger dumped some speed before the critical turn so he could set up properly, and it probably won him the race.
“I saw it in the inspection, we will be very fast at this position, so I make more turns before this one so I had (the line) to do this turn right,” Streitberger said. “I think that was the difference.”
With the cancellation of Friday’s downhill and a bleak performance Saturday, the U.S. men will have to perform well in today’s giant slalom if this is to be anything but a lost weekend.
“A lot of us think this is the coolest super-G hill in the World Cup, and we were all really excited to have a good day,” Ligety said. “It’s definitely a bummer, but that’s ski racing. If you want to be fast in super-G, you have to be on the fine line of making it or not. We were on the wrong side of that line.”
John Meyer: 303-954-1616 or jmeyer@denverpost.com
