Two-time World Cup giant slalom champion Ted Ligety, the 2006 Olympic champion in the combined, reports regularly in collaboration with Denver Post ski writer John Meyer.
WENGEN, Switzerland — The World Cup last week and this week features two of the “classic” downhills, the Lauberhorn in Wengen, and the Hahnenkamm in Kitzbuehel, Austria.
My specialty is giant slalom — I’ve had only one top-30 finish in downhill — but downhill is fun. Even when you’re not challenging for the podium, it’s still fun because of the sensation of speed. It’s not super hard to make a downhill turn, but it is super hard to make a downhill turn clean and fast.
The setting in Wengen, where I finished 31st Saturday, is one of the coolest things about it. When you’re in the start gate, you’re looking straight at the North Face of the Eiger. The first few gates are pretty uneventful, but then you go into a carousel turn, followed by a jump off a cliff.
A little farther down you’re going around 70 mph and you’re looking straight at an oncoming fence. It’s pretty intimidating trying to make a turn that fast to avoid the fence. Coming out of that, you’re tucking and you go under a railway bridge.
Then you get to a section called the Haneggschuss that is one of the fastest on the World Cup. Bode Miller topped 89 mph there Saturday, and a couple of years ago I exceeded 99 mph in that section during a training run.
This coming weekend will mark my third time running the notorious downhill in Kitzbuehel. You notice in the start gate for the first training run, everybody is a little more quiet, a little more focused, a little more solemn than normal.
My first training run down the Hahnenkamm, I was very, very scared, to put it lightly. You know one small mistake can put you into the net pretty hard.
We’ll have three downhill training runs there beginning today, with a super-G race Friday, the downhill Saturday and a super-combined Sunday.
