U.S. Nationals: Winds blow away Friday slaloms

SUGARLOAF, Maine — The good news: They found the start tent.
    Winds strong enough to break the anemometer at nearby Mount Washington ravaged the racing venues for the Nature Valley 2008 U.S. Alpine Championships here Thursday night, blowing down a television tower and sending the start tent into the trees, twisting the metal framework like a pretzel. Race crews Friday morning had located, they thought, all of the tent pieces and were bringing it down the mountain to have new framework fabricated. But the job of rescheduling a racing calendar that has lost two days continued to grow ever more difficult.
    Among the scheduling problems is accommodating television. Ideally, whatever discipline is broadcast would include racers of both genders. If it is possible, the schedule as of this morning is to run both slaloms Saturday and get the television obligation out of the way to allow more flexibility in the schedule. If the storm continues to linger and the slaloms do not get run, officials are considering going to super G's on Sunday, possibly adding a downhill training run on the same day.

SUGARLOAF, Maine — The good news: They found the start tent.
    Winds strong enough to break the anemometer at nearby Mount Washington ravaged the racing venues for the Nature Valley 2008 U.S. Alpine Championships here Thursday night, blowing down a television tower and sending the start tent into the trees, twisting the metal framework like a pretzel. Race crews Friday morning had located, they thought, all of the tent pieces and were bringing it down the mountain to have new framework fabricated. But the job of rescheduling a racing calendar that has lost two days continued to grow ever more difficult.
    Among the scheduling problems is accommodating television. Ideally, whatever discipline is broadcast would include racers of both genders. If it is possible, the schedule as of this morning is to run both slaloms Saturday and get the television obligation out of the way to allow more flexibility in the schedule. If the storm continues to linger and the slaloms do not get run, officials are considering going to super G's on Sunday, possibly adding a downhill training run on the same day.
    The athletic objective is still focused on getting in all of the national championship races. Officials are entertaining a variety of scheduling options and a more detailed plan has been promised in time for the Team Captains' meeting this evening.
    Winds were estimated to be well over 100 mph.
    "The wind is supposed to subside tonight," said USSA Competition Director Walt Evans. "But it's blowing right up the hill and the gates are taking it in the gut."
    Sugarloaf was unable to operate any of its lifts, which would have made the racing difficult, but not impossible. Officials had a plan for that, catting racers and other necessary people up to the course, but the winds were too high for racing, even for slalom.
    "We want to get all the races in," he said, adding, "if we just can get a window we can jam them all in. The days are longer and we should be able to do it."
    Dropping the downhills from the schedule would be a last resort, Evans added.
    "We want to hang on to the downhills as long as we can," he said. "We want to hang on to all of them, but the downhills are a bit critical because we lost those NorAm downhills earilier this season, so I really want to get them in."
    The first half of a set of four downhills had originally been scheduled for today with the national title races Saturday, but that schedule was blown away earlier this week as it has not yet been possible to get in a training run. The schedule was altered at the race jury meeting Thursday night to run slaloms today.