Are: Team event exciting but it needs a few tweaks

Will it be a battle of the heavyweights in Sunday’s nations team event that closes out competition at these World Championships? Our will a supposedly less-powerful nation pull a stunner like Germany did at Bormio in 2005, shooting down the likes of Austria, Sweden and the United States.
    A medal Sunday would help salvage a so-so worlds for the U.S. Ski Team. But the squad — as will most of the teams in the field — won't have all of its big guns available because many of the speed event racers departed Are a week ago.

ARE, Sweden — Will it be a battle of the heavyweights in Sunday’s nations team event that closes out competition at these World Championships? Our will a supposedly less-powerful nation pull a stunner like Germany did at Bormio in 2005, shooting down the likes of Austria, Sweden and the United States.
    A medal Sunday would help salvage a so-so worlds for the U.S. Ski Team, which kicked things off here with a powerful showing in the women’s speed events during the first week but has since sputtered in the technical events. The U.S. men, meanwhile, never got it going in Are, climaxing on Saturday when three of the four Americans in the slalom failed to finish.
    A group of racers known more for its prowess in the technical events of slalom and giant slalom will represent the United States in Sunday’s nations team event, which debuted at the 2005 World Championships and was contested again at the World Cup Finals. Kaylin Richardson and Resi Stiegler will represent the U.S. women, while Ted Ligety, Jimmy Cochran and Tim Jitloff will comprise the men’s team. The U.S. will battle 10 other nations in the event, which features two runs of slalom and two runs of super G for each gender. The aggregate times of the eight races per team will be added to determine the gold medal-winning squad. The super G runs will begin at 10 a.m. local time (4 a.m. ET) and the slalom runs at 1 p.m. (7 a.m. ET).
    “And then there were two,” Richardson said at Friday night’s women’s slalom. “Every day we’ve been talking about it and getting all psyched up. … Resi and I both had good results, respectively, in slalom and super G, so we’ll see. Go as fast as we can.”
    Richardson acknowledged her team’s chances of winning are slimmer without either Julia Mancuso or Lindsey Kildow racing. Mancuso has already left Are to rest at home, while Kildow injured her knee on Thursday and is rehabbing in Austria.
    “As far as the girls, we’ve got a small team here and our big shots unfortunately cannot compete,” women’s coach Patrick Riml said. “The girls we have here can ski real well and are fired up and know they have an opportunity to win a medal, so they will give all they have.”
    But most teams won’t have all the bullets in their respective guns on Sunday because many of the speed event racers departed Are a week ago.
    U.S. men’s coach Phil McNichol said the team event generated excitement two years ago in Bormio and “came off way better than my expectations.” But he added that the format needs a lot of modifications in order to, one, keep the best racers around for the event and, two, build more momentum.
    “I really wish they would actually look at running the team event in middle of the championships so that all speed skiers and tech skiers are still on venue.That would give all the teams an opportunity to run all the marquee athletes,” McNichol said. “Everyone is fresher, the energy of the event is different.
    “It’s nice to use the team event as a finale, but in the middle of the event it would highlight it more.”

FIS makes change for 2009
    Apparently the International Ski Federation agreed with McNichol. FIS President Gian Franco Kasper said Saturday that the team event will be moved to the middle weekend for the next World Championships in 2009 in Val d'Isere, France.   
    "It will be in the future in the middle, for a completely different reason,'' Kasper said. ''The reason is that we don't have to keep the downhill or the super G course open for two weeks. That's very difficult and a lot of work.''
    McNichol and Riml agreed it is cost prohibitive to keep one or two speed skiers around an extra week just to race in one more event. Another factor is rest. The men’s speed squad will resume World Cup racing next weekend in Germany, and getting those guys some rest is crucial, McNichol said.
    McNichol went on to compare the team event with the new super combined that debuted this season on the World Cup. “I like it personally, but it’s still in limbo. It hasn’t found its identity yet,” he said. “It hasn’t found its way in the calendar, it’s purpose, so to speak, in terms of managing the downhill guys in terms of using it for training or racing in it. The team event concept still needs to be re-evaluated in terms of when and how it is run.”
    Joining the U.S. team in the field for the team event are Austria, Canada, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Slovenia, Switzerland and Sweden. 

— Whitney Childers and The Associated Press contributed to this story