WC Rewind: A sad day for the Hahnenkamm

Lorries and dump trucks rolled through the streets of Kitzbühel and helicopters hovered overhead as the local organizing committee struggled to prepare for Hahenkamm 2007. And they did what they set out to do, hauling in 3,000 cubic meters of snow to fill holes on the famed Streif racecourse. One night of warm wind wiped the effort out.
    “The wind simply melted away over 30 cm of snow on the upper and middle course segments as if with a warm hairdryer. Holding the downhill race is unthinkable, the course can no longer be prepared,” reads the Web site report. The 67th annual Hahnenkamm — the centerpiece of the alpine racing table — has been reduced to a pair of slaloms.
LORRIES AND DUMP TRUCKS rolled through the streets of Kitzbühel and helicopters hovered overhead as the local organizing committee struggled to prepare for Hahenkamm 2007. And they did what they set out to do, hauling in 3,000 cubic meters of snow to fill holes on the famed Streif racecourse. One night of warm wind wiped the effort out.
    “The wind simply melted away over 30 cm of snow on the upper and middle course segments as if with a warm hairdryer. Holding the downhill race is unthinkable, the course can no longer be prepared,” reads the Web site report. The 67th annual Hahnenkamm — the centerpiece of the alpine racing table — has been reduced to a pair of slaloms.
    At Val d’Isere, Pierre-Emmanuel Dalcin brought about the first good news for France of the season by winning the seventh men’s downhill, but conditions played a very large role. Late starters had little chance to unseat Dalcin, who started sixth.
    Dalcin was perfect. He talked about fulfilling a quest to match the last great French racer, Luc Alphand. And, there were Canadians in second and third, Eric Guay (17th start) and Manuel Osborne-Paradis (16th start). It was Dalcin’s first win. It was the first podium of the season for Guay and the second career podium for Osborne-Paradis. It was not business as usual.
    It was the only race held at Val d’Isere as fog made further racing impossible.
    A lack of fairness is only a small matter in terms of the race — over the season, the reasoning goes, the cream will rise — but with Kitzbühel now gone, there are no downhills — or super G’s — before the World Championships. Team selection just got compressed.
    Selections already would have been difficult. Wengen had its share of weather problems and the attendant complaints. So basically the choices now have to be made based on results from December at Bormio, Beaver Creek and Val Gardena.
    This is why coaches get the big bucks.
    Cortina d’Ampezzo hosted three women’s races this past week. Renate Goetschl reinforced her status as a goddess in Cortina by adding her 10th career win at the site in the downhill. Ten wins at one site. Four would put a racer in rarified air. Eight would give a skier second place.
    Yet Goetschl’s win paled compared to the showing of Julia Mancuso, who won the SG and was second in both the downhill and GS. And, as far as the populous of Cortina was concerned, it was the homies who stood tallest: Karen Putzer in first and Denise Karbon in third in that final giant slalom. Both without significant success in three seasons, suddenly back on top of their game.
    Both Putzer and Mancuso had hip surgery in the off-season. Take a bow, Doc. Putzer had put hers off, Mancuso did not.
    Not all were so successful. The Austrian women missed the top 10 of the GS for the first time in three years. The Swiss tabloid Blick suggests since no Swiss women meet criteria for World Championships, it is now official that Switzerland is a Third World country. Sweden’s superstar Anja Paerson elected to head home, skip the next week of World Cup and focus on the World Championships beginning at the turn of the month.
    The U.S. team, now with Mancuso at the helm, has stayed in the headlines. The team has won more races that any other U.S. squad at this point of the season. Mancuso this week set a record for scoring podiums in five straight races. But Lindsey Kildow, the only other U.S. woman in the top 20 of the World Cup standings, is banged up. Beyond the always-unpredictable Bode Miller, the men’s team is depending on Ted Ligety and Steven Nyman, neither of whom had a win to their name at this time last season.
    Things have been going well. The U.S. has won 17 percent of the available podium placings this season, well behind the 35percent of the Austrians, but very respectable. The Swiss and Italians account for 8.5 percent apiece, the Swedes 7 percent, the Canadians, 6.
    The men have three slaloms, and nothing else, on the schedule before the World Championships. The women have speed races on tap.
    A final note from the nordic world: Jan Mazoch, a young Czech jumper, remains in an induced coma after crashing in a wind-plagued ski-Jumping event in Poland. Our prayers are with you, Jan.