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.
KITZBUEHEL, AUSTRIA — As any fan of ski racing knows, the downhill here is the scariest on the World Cup. Almost every year, somebody has a super-serious injury: Scott Macartney in 2008, Daniel Albrecht in 2009.
This year it was Hans Grugger, an Austrian who had a bad crash in a training run on a jump called the Mausefalle (“Mouse Trap”). He was taken to the hospital via helicoper with a head injury.
The Mausefalle is an intense jump, very intimidating. You’re going super fast, 10 seconds out of the start gate. You’re doing a huge turn right before it, and you have to get the right direction right before you go off it. Then the ground falls away from you. You’re about 15 feet high and you’re flying a good 40 meters in distance.
Most of us were at the start, watching on a TV monitor. Grugger was one of the first couple of guys to go down, and his crash intimidated the whole field.
We don’t even know what’s going on with him, we just know the prognosis isn’t good.
Nevertheless, the downhill on Saturday went pretty well for me. I finished 27th, and was happy to score points — my first points ever in the Kitzbuehel downhill. I’m officially no longer a downhill rookie. That’s a pretty good feeling.
I was inspired by watching Switzerland’s Didier Cuche, the winner, grab his tuck in mid-air off the Mausefalle. I tried to copy him, and I was able to pull it off pretty well. That was probably my finest moment.
Cuche was like a little ball in mid-air, in a tight tuck, and I tried to copy him. I think we were the only two guys tucking in mid-air there, so that was pretty cool.
I finished 22nd Friday in the super-G. It wasn’t quite the race I wanted, but I scored points and it was my best super-G result of the year. I didn’t nail the top section, which I was hoping would be my bread and butter because it was the “turny” part of the course. But by the time I started, 28th, the course had gotten pretty beaten up, so it was hard to take the line I really wanted.
The Kitzbuehel slalom is one of the more difficult ones, and I was a DNF Sunday. It’s never going in a straight fall line. It’s always undulating over a lot of rolls and you have to be on your game from the get-go.
