Olympic downhill day dawns at Rosa Khutor

By Published On: February 9th, 2014Comments Off on Olympic downhill day dawns at Rosa Khutor
The sun comes up on Rosa Khutor, a couple of hours before the men's Olympic downhill. (Tim Etchells)

The sun comes up on Rosa Khutor, a couple of hours before the men’s Olympic downhill. (Tim Etchells)

ROSA KHUTOR, Russia – Days get started slowly here in the mountains above Sochi. At 7:30, it’s still pitch black on the 30-minute bus ride from the Gorki Media Center in Krasnaya Polyana up to the press room at the Rosa Khutor Alpine Center, site of today’s men’s Olympic downhill.

As the sun finally came up, it first hit the tops of the peaks above Rosa Khutor. There were a few more high clouds, but not much wind, and it looked like it would be another in a series of pretty benign weather days. In the Rosa Khutor media center, the room was filling up fast with the polyglot Olympic press corps, giving race day a much different vibe than during the relatively sleepy training run days.

With the race scheduled to start at 11 a.m., U.S. skier Steven Nyman is at the top of the start list, with bib number one. The other Americans are Travis Ganong, starting eighth; Bode Miller, who has ridden two training run “wins” to the favorite’s role today, in 15th; and Marco Sullivan, 25th.

For Canada, Jan Hudec starts second, Benjamin Thomsen sixth, Erik Guay 21st, and Manuel Osborne-Paradis 28th.

Among the other top contenders, World Cup downhill leader Aksel Lund Svindal of Norway starts 18th; Italy’s Carlo Janka third; Austria’s Matthias Mayer (who won the only training run that Bode Miller didn’t) 11th and Max Franz (who did a mute grab off the finish jump at the end of Saturday’s training run) ninth; and Patrick Kueng of Switzerland 16th.

Before the men’s race, the women were scheduled for a fourth training run at 10 a.m. None of the American women, who race the super combined on Monday and the downhill on Tuesday, will be skiing today.

As fascinating as the men’s race will certainly be, it will also be interesting to see if the fans turn out. The stadium has been almost completely empty for all of the training runs, and Russians have never really gotten too excited about alpine skiing. We’ll see.

One thing we know for sure is that the course will be firm and very fast – in training runs, the top reported speed on the injected, machine-made snow was 85 mph – with lots of big arcing turns and four major jumps.

A lot of things surrounding these Olympic Games seem not quite finished: hotels, roadways, sidewalks, restaurants, etc. But the downhill course is one thing that has gotten nothing but raves from racers and spectators alike.

As Marco Sullivan said after Saturday’s trainer, “Sometimes after so many training runs the course can get really hacked, but this one is staying in good condition and guys are going to be able to go 100 percent and really it’ll be the ability of the athlete that’s going to win it.”

Share This Article

About the Author: Tim Etchells

Former Ski Racing editor