SOCHI, russia — We had downhill and super combined races this past weekend on the course where the 2014 Winter Olympics will be held. The hill, especially for downhill, is one of the coolest tracks out there.
It’s got a little bit of everything. It’s really steep and turny for the first minute and a half, and it has some really big jumps in it, followed by some gliding sections at the bottom. For this first “test event,” the gates were set a little bit on the turny side.
They put a lot of water on it, and it was the iciest race conditions I’ve seen in a couple of years. That was a tough adjustment, especially since none of our other races this year have been anywhere close to icy.
But the mountain is awesome, and the ski area is pretty epic. It has almost 5,000 feet of vertical, with tons and tons of sweet powder skiing. From the top, you can see the Black Sea, 25 miles away.
Security was really tight. The whole ski area has been closed for the past month, preparing for this, and getting on a lift is like going through airport security. You have to put your skis and your bags through the X-ray machine, and they pat you down. You always have to have your credential with you, and there are guys with machine guns everywhere checking credentials.
The threat of terrorism here is very, very real. We’re 100 miles from Chechnya. Chechen militants bombed the subway and airport in Moscow in recent years, so the government sees the Olympic venues as potential terrorist targets. They actually bombed one of the lift towers here last year.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev was here for the races, so that might have been part of the reason for strict security as well.
There’s also a ton of construction going on — I’ve never seen construction on a scale like this. We landed at 3 a.m., and the whole drive from the airport to the ski area — an hour’s drive — was marked with bright lights on either side of the road because of construction on a railway and the road. They’re working 24/7 on getting this thing built up.
Ligety, a three-time World Cup giant slalom champion, reports regularly in collaboration with Denver Post ski writer John Meyer
