Beaver Creek: Downhillers are a rare breed

BEAVER CREEK, Colorado — Jimmy Cochran perhaps came away with some unexpected World Cup points after a 28th-place finish in the super combined.
BEAVER CREEK, Colorado — Jimmy Cochran perhaps came away with some unexpected World Cup points after a 28th-place finish in the super combined.
    He also came away with a ton of newfound respect for the guys who ski really, really fast.
    Cochran, a U.S. Ski Team member entering his third season on the World Cup, completed his first downhill on the difficult Birds of Prey course Thursday in the first half of the super combined event. He then finished the slalom on the bottom of the Birds of Prey track for the first time in three tries.
    “To finally get down, it’s good confidence for Sunday,” said Cochran, who will ski on the same slope in Sunday’s slalom event. “I’d just like to keep improving. I mean, another top 15 [finish] would be great. I’d be really psyched. I’m really excited when I get a second run.”
    Cochran led the U.S. men with a 15th-place finish in the season-opening slalom in Levi, Finland, but admitted he didn’t ski his best there. But he did leave Levi with a better idea of what he will need to do to consistently place in the top 15.
    “In slalom right now, you can’t come up, you can’t come back. It’s all about minimizing your upper-body movement,” he said. “I kind of started to figure that out in Levi. It helps a lot. … Every day you do well is a good confidence boost.”
    So is staying in one piece after descending the Birds of Prey downhill course. A few racers before Cochran kicked out of the gate, teammate T.J. Lanning crashed near the bottom of the course after hitting a compression and flying sideways off the Red Tail Jump and careening off the netting. Lanning sustained injuries to his nose and hand in the fall and will have surgery Friday.
    “I mean, in GS and slalom, you’ve gotta inspect, you’ve gotta pay attention,” Cochran said. “If you screw up or miss something — the wrong line or something — no big deal. In downhill, you do what T.J. did, or worse. Just that kind of stress, knowing you can’t screw up, is exhausting.   
    “I was blown away. It’s unbelievable. I don’t know how these guys do it every week.”
    Cochran said he trained some downhill over the summer during the team’s training camp in Portillo, Chile. He came out of that training more confident he could run downhill. Then came Wednesday’s training run on Birds of Prey.
    “I was feeling pretty good. I was like, ‘I can do speed, I can do downhill. It’s not so bad.’ Then [Wednesday], first run down I was blown away,” he said. “There’s nothing that can prepare you for that. The speed and the intensity and the jumps. Chile’s great downhill training but you can’t replicate this. After this I have so much more respect for downhillers. It’s incredible.”