The World Cup According to Grande: Dane Spencer and the 2006 Olympics

By Published On: August 8th, 2010Comments Off on The World Cup According to Grande: Dane Spencer and the 2006 Olympics

Our 2006 season began with the greatest level of hope we had ever had, especially in GS.  Our GS team was one of the strongest in the world. Daron had come into the tech group, trained hard with focus and had become a GS force after his bronze in Bormio in 2005. Schlopy was a near podium guy and was rounding into form again. Jimmy seemed ready to move. And Ted had put in a monstrous amount of GS volume that summer with a dedicated focus on becoming a GS threat.  Bode was the best GS skier in the world, hands down.  And I haven’t even mentioned Dane Spencer yet, who had been our most consistent scorer over the years. If not the guy on the podium, he was always lurking around the top ten or fifteen, picking up very important points. But he also had the speed you needed to get on the steps. It was just a matter of a little luck, to us.

I saw Dane finish eighth on a first run in Alta Badia after leading 3/4 of the way down. I saw him finish seventh in the World Championship GS at Bormio. But all of that gives you no real measure of the man I know. And the reason I bring it up, is because he has been hired to fill a role on the U.S. Ski Team that is entirely necessary. And few people know the role as well as he does. To be the Europa Cup/World Cup cross-over guy takes a great deal of patience and experience. It also takes a deep knowledge of what it takes. I have done many of those trips, dropping into a different group and a different dynamic with maybe one or two guys who see themselves as World Cup guys. But Dane will be perfect at it. As a GS specialist, he was constantly being sent to Europa Cup and FIS GS races to try to score back-up results and keep sharp. He was also constantly trying to expand into Super G, to give him another discipline in which to compete at the World Cup. He is the man with the insight to make that transition happen smoothly.

We had Bode, Daron, Dane and Schlopy all ranked in the top 20 in the world going into the 2006 season. So it would seem that would be our GS team for the Olympics. But we had two younger guys ready to make a move. Ted had put in all that work and Jimmy had shown speed in GS over the last year. And the two had gotten together with Voelkl and had come up with a quality GS ski that season as well as a dedicated factory service guy.

Ted opened the season at Soelden with an eighth place finish and Bode was second to Hermann Maier in what was a disappointment to Bode to not convert that win after a large lead, but those are the breaks. And we moved on, to the North American swing and Bode was on fire, dominating Lake Louise and coming home to Beaver Creek. The GS there set up very well for us. It’s a long, flattish GS with plenty of room to set GS in the 30 meter range. And add in that grippy, perfect, Colorado man-made and the American boys were ready. It was an epic day. With Bode winning, Daron in second, Schlopy in 4th (just .01 behind Palander in third) and Dane in 12th, it was a magical day. If not for the huge crash Ted took on the 4th gate or so, and Jimmy missing his start (that is his story to tell), it would have been the best day in GS history for the USA. But we were all thinking about Olympic criteria and at this point, Bode, Daron, Schlopes and Ted owned the selection. And the first three were all but immoveable with top-five finishes.

We packed the gear and moved on to Europe and Alta Badia. As much as we wanted to kill it there, it just never happened and “D” backed up his Beaver Creek result with a 4th and Schlopes was 19th, giving him a back up. But we had Kranjska Gora that year before Christmas, and aside from a very long shopping stop at a SparMarkt in Lienz, Austria with Chip Knight, we arrived there with little issue. Kranjska is a USA favorite in all ways. There is great pizza and a very lively atmosphere with great ski racing fans. They are deeply knowledgeable and tend to back us right behind their home-town boys. We were looking forward to it. Erik knocked down a 6th place putting him firmly in the Olympic team. And Jimmy backed him up with a seventh. Dane skied very well and finished 20th.

But now, going into the Christmas break, we were staring at an Olympic GS team currently made of Bode, Daron, Erik and Jimmy,  with the break at home sitting there in front of us all and Adelboden coming up after New Year’s.  Ted had a top 10 and Dane a 12th and 20th. That puts Ted ahead of Dane but with a lot of opening for Dane to supplant Jimmy and Ted if he could equal Jim’s seventh place. On top of that, Adelboden had been Dane’s best place for results over the years. It’s an aggressive skier’s hill and he is that, for sure. But the turning point in Dane’s career was about to happen. It was not at Big Mountain as most people believe, but in Adelboden, our last selection race before the Torino Games.

Dane started with a good number and was in 18th at the first split in Adelboden. He has hammering and giving everything coming off the second pitch. And then, just above the second split, he hit a small shelf next to the gate and went on his hip. He was out. And his Olympic aspirations went with him, for that season, or so we thought. When I put him side by side on Dartfish with Erik’s first run (4th place), Dane was making up ground on him between interval one and two and it looked as if Dane was headed to a top 10 first run, with a chance to win the spot. My heart sank when I heard my compadre, Mike Morin; say those dreaded words on the radio…” Dane…out.”

Dane and I go back to when he was a Western Region athlete in the mid 90’s and trying to claw himself into the ski team after making it briefly as a 16 year old and getting cut after one season. His persistence is amazing in trial after trial. He has dealt with bad knees, a horrible back problem which is addressed in many ways over the years. But every season he would fight back and score GS points and then show that brilliance like in Alta Badia, 2004 when he was charging on those Élan skis and had the lead on run 1 at the 3rd interval. He fell back to 8th on the run but it showed what he had. How he could step on the gas. And then in Bormio at World Champs, sitting in 6th after run one and only a few tenths off the podium. He had his teammate Daron in the lead.  He finished 7th there, not at all bad.

But when he went out in Adelboden, it all seemed like it was over. He was now going to have to make a schedule away from the World Cup and get ready for Korea and the Finals in Are as he was still solidly in the mix for that selection. We went over many scenarios. Some were to stay in Europe and race Europa Cup and FIS races or go home for a while and then join the Nor Am tour racing speed. The decision was made for him to go home and then to Rossland, BC for some Nor Am Super G races and then to Big Mountain for Nor Am Downhills and SuperGs.

The news came the night Ted won his gold medal in Torino. We were all fired up and jumping up and down celebrating the new medal-man. Soon after Ted won his Gold, my phone rang with the news that Dane had crashed in Big Mountain and had serious head and neck injuries and that we should all pray for him and help him through. We were told he was revived on the hill by a local doctor who was there watching the race and therefore saving his life. We all spent the rest of the Games with Dane in our thoughts and hearts, just hoping for him to pull through.

We raced the rest of the Olympics and tried to do our best. I think the guys were focused on the task but I saw, at GS inspection, four guys who were looking for help, who were not really focused. Not the four guys I knew, who were always ready to have a discussion about the plan, athletes who showed up with an opinion. They were waiti
ng for a plan. I gave one and it was the right plan, but I have always felt their minds were elsewhere. Not necessarily on Dane, but distracted. It is hard to put your finger on it but I felt like they were not “all-there.”

On the odyssey to Korea from Torino, we got good news that Dane was coming around and when we got there we heard more good news about him and I was able to talk to Jasmine, his girlfriend and she assured me he was asking about us and was sharp and looked good in his “halo.”  I passed this along to the boys in a hotel hallway in Yong Pyong, South Korea as we met about the following day’s schedule. I rarely give “win one for the Gipper” speeches but I tried one. It didn’t work.

As we left Korea after Ted’s first World Cup win in the GS and we flew to Japan, I had to wonder what Dane was doing and thinking. My last thought as I fell asleep in my airplane chair was that Dane would come back. He has always come back. He’s been hurt before, he can come back. But he never really did to the same level. He sure tried.

And now, he IS back, giving back in a new way. Helping guys deal with the transition between Europa Cup and World Cup that he always had to deal with. No one can question his passion. Stay true, Dane!

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Greg “Grande” Needell grew up ski racing at Stratton Mountain,
Vermont. After graduating from SMS he skied for NCAA Division 1 St.
Lawrence University in Canton, NY where he was co-captain in 1986. Greg
returned to SMS to coach there for five years serving as the Head
Women’s Coach as well as the Head J2 Men’s Coach. He then moved to
Mission Ridge in Wenatchee, Washington in 1992 to become the Program
Director and Head Coach of the Mission Ridge Ski Club. In 1997, Greg
became the Head Coach at Mammoth Mountain, California.

In 2002 Needell was asked to join the U.S. Ski Team staff as a World
Cup SL and GS coach. From 2002 to 2008 Needell helped lead the U.S. Ski
Team Men to 43 wins, 105 podiums and 264 top ten finishes. Now at the
helm of Alpine Race Consulting, Needell offers his knowledge and
experience to clubs nationwide.

Click here for “The World Cup According to Grande” archive.

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About the Author: Eric Williams