FIS official Gunther Hujara defends controversial Schladming race

FIS official Gunther Hujara defends controversial Schladming race{mosimage}Gunther Hujara, the FIS race director for the men’s World Cup, is defending the integrity of Tuesday night’s World Cup slalom race at Schladming, Austria — a race that many say unfairly deprived American Bode Miller of a victory.

Hujara is particularly angry about allegations that the jury allowed Miller’s run to be sabotaged by course workers sympathetic to one of Miller’s main rivals, Benjamin Raich of Austria. Raich won the race, and is now leading in the race for the overall World Cup.

In the popular night race, which brought 41,000 fans to Schladming this year, Miller seemed all but assured of his first slalom victory in almost two years. Then a unique confluence of circumstances took it away from him. Miller, who had won the first run by 0.98 seconds, was due to run last in the second run. Just before him was Ivica Kostelic of Croatia, who crashed midway down the course’s steep and icy lower pitch. It took more than 20 minutes for a patrol crew to evacuate Kostelic.

Meanwhile Miller stood in the start shack, joking with his serviceman and the U.S. Ski Team’s physiologist to keep himself relaxed. American coaches noticed that the wet snowflakes that were falling on the course were obscuring the groove that 29 racers had left in the water-injected snow, and called for the jury to send course-slippers. The few that were sent didn’t slip the upper section of the course, and by the time Miller got to the end of that stretch, his cushion from the first run had already evaporated.

Miller had one of the race’s slowest second runs, finishing fourth overall only on the strength of his dominant first run. U.S. Ski Team coaches cried foul, saying the snow had handicapped Miller. But they didn’t file a formal protest because they didn’t want to see the whole race get thrown out.

Ski Racing talked to Hujara, who stands at the head of every race jury on the men’s World Cup tour. Hujara defended the race and the jury’s decisions, but admits Miller had “bad luck.”

Ski Racing: Was it fair to have a 15-minute course hold? Should there have been a quicker evacuation or more course slippers working?

Gunther Hujara: I guess it was an even longer course hold. In this case we have to say that it was bad luck for Bode that this racer fell. If the second-to-last racer had fallen in the race and we had done all preparation work, it’s clear that we won’t have 50 course slippers left in the start. We had about eight to 10. I don’t remember exactly because I left before he did to check a gate that we wanted to prepare specially so that he [Miller] had no disadvantage. We did it. Then this fall happened. Nobody could foresee how long it takes. Nobody could estimate that an evacuation lasts more than twenty minutes. So we sent the last course slippers from the top to slip. It was done.

We held this crew about 15 gates below the start so that they could slip the whole steep part. We wanted to clean the course, also, where the evacuation took place. When Kostelic was evacuated off the line we cleaned the course. I asked whether the course was clear, we did the slip, during the evacuation I called the course workers to clean the line three times. They worked with the rakes and shovels. That’s all you can do. Then we started Bode. For me there is too much emotion in a case which is something which might happen. I think Kostelic did not have a purpose in falling there. Nobody had a purpose to not move him off the line and to keep Bode in the start. It’s what’s talked around by people who are not in this sport and have no feeling for what’s do-able and what’s not.

SR: What was do-able was sending slip crews through?

GH: You cannot bring sideslippers back to the start in this time. It’s not possible. You have an infrastructure and this is the same all over the world. You can only work with what you have. You have your resources.

SR: You mention this one particular gate that you were working on. You were worried he’d have a disadvantage.

GH: We saw that there is one gate, leading into the Steilhang, where a few racers had problems. I wanted to go down there to check whether it broke out. Whether we have shiny ice on it. We raked it so that everything is done for the last racer. I could see the start. I could see there. And then all of a sudden I heard on the radio “Start stop.” To hold the start. I had not seen Kostelic fall. And Bode was in the start. And you know the story. That’s all you can do. It’s a ski race. It’s no whatever secret wonderland. We deal with real resources. Not what we wish: what we have. That’s what we do. I think we’ve proved so many times that we guarantee what’s do-able. In this case too. And I have to say that for Bode it was really bad luck. Not more. We tried. I tried.

SR: Did it make you think about what happened at Val d’Isere a year ago?

GH: Sure. I thought in that second, seeing how slow they moved that sled to the injured racer. I thought of last year’s so-called scandal, where they nailed me almost to the cross because we had [Stephan] Eberharter, with no serious injury, waiting off the course, and we had no information from our side that we should stop, and we sent a sled and they sent it away. Then they made a story out of it. And all coaches supported this scandal story. They said, “We have an injured racer and we have to stop and we have to wait.” Now, exactly that has happened, and everybody is upset.

If this would not have happened last year with Eberharter, then maybe when I saw that the sled was so slow coming to Kostelic, because they were scared of the icy course, then maybe I would have skied there and taken the sled and in 20 seconds I would have been there at the racer. But I had my hands tied now. I said, “So, that’s what they want.” Imagine I interfere with the rescue, making it happen quicker. There was no threatening situation: it was a knee and a shoulder. It might hurt a little bit, but you can transport him 10 meters off the line. But the coaches, they made a big thing out of it last year at Val d’Isere. They said, “No, no, no.” Nobody understood. It’s the complaining. A racer who is injured is in a much worse situation than a racer who is waiting in the start.

But sometimes you think of both sides. Advantage and disadvantage. This came all together. Now I think, talking to Bode, he is a sportsman, and he understands very well. He says, and is right, that he’d like to see more people slipping the course, more people cleaning the course. That’s what we all want, and I ordered, but there are resources and that happened. That’s why I say bad luck. But it’s the right of Bode to say that and to ask for that. There were no more slip crews, so he had to start and he started. Bode is not the guy to complain too much. He said ‘I did my best.’ What he said in his interview after the run, everybody understood. They saw that he is the sportsman. He is the fair guy. He is not the one talking about rumors and advantages and complaining and scandals. That’s the real sportsman. Not the people around him who try to do something right now.

SR: Have you gotten a lot of pressure about this?

GH: As usual. As usual. But give people five minutes to think about it, and then they see different angles too. It’s so easy. What surprises me sometimes is that the first reaction, the first question, is always what the FIS must do.

SR: You’re the FIS race director, and you always work with the race’s technical delegate. How does it work?

GH: There’s the jury. I’m the head of the jury. But we cannot be on every section of the course. I work on my section. I shovel. It’s not my duty but I do it. Everybody works on his section, and then you have the resources for a ski race. Not for wonderland. For ski race. There are no secrets. There are no things you can do better for other people. You can do it or you can’t do it. If
the second to last racer falls, for sure you have planned with your slip crews and everybody that the course is in its best shape until the last racer. You do all of the preparations during the race. You don’t keep 100 slippers back from the second-to-last racer until the last racer. That’s not how a ski race runs. Nobody expects that an evacuation of a ski racer takes 22 minutes.

SR: Is that was it was? 22 minutes?

GH: I do not know, I don’t count. It was a very long evacuation, but caused by the steepness and the very icy conditions. I will never interfere in a medical procedure. If the doctor who was there decides we have to keep him here and treat him until he is okay, or if he gives him some drugs to reduce his pain, it’s the doctor’s decision and we wait. In the meantime, we try to do the best we can. We have our resources, and no secrets. … But who stops the snowfall? Not you, not me. That’s ski racing. It happens in Beaver Creek, happens in Kitzbuehel, happens in Wengen, happens in Schladming, happens in Garmisch.

SR: You’ve gotten a lot of flak for this. You’ve gotten a lot of flak all year. Did you expect that?

GH: I knew that. I knew it would be like this. Someone has to do it. Why not me? It’s not volunteer. I get my money and my living. I do not think that too many people could do this job. Especially those who are talking many times too loud. They could not do this job.

SR: Do you follow how things like, say, Schladming, are interpreted by the media? You say ‘wonderland,’ and I wonder what you’re referring to.

GH: Look, we work together with all organizers, we try to deliver the best product to everybody. One day the racers are happy and the media people are completely unhappy because there’s not enough story in it. Or scandal. One day the press people are very happy, and the racers are very unhappy. Today, the course set may be a problem for some of those who did not find the right way through. Others are happy with it. There is a jump in it and some people like the jump and some do not. There’s always a discussion. You can never guarantee that one-hundred percent of the whole field is happy or satisfied. We shouldn’t try to do that. We should go with a red line and I think everyone can see this red line. And as long as this is guaranteed, I’m very happy. I do not hesitate to do tough jobs. Never.