WC Rewind: Nine titles at stake as March arrives

If the Whistler Olympic test events proved anything, it is that the 2008 World Cup season is nowhere near complete.
    Two of the 12 World Cup titles have been determined with both of them going to Americans: Bode Miller combined and Lindsey Vonn DH. Another, women’s GS, has the padlock on the door with Italian Denise Karbon holding an 181-point lead and two races remaining.
    The other nine titles, though, are in doubt; none more so than the overall titles and the U.S. has players in both those contests.
    At Whistler that drama began to play out.
IF THE WHISTLER OLYMPIC test events proved anything, it is that the 2008 World Cup season is nowhere near complete.
    Two of the 12 World Cup titles have been determined with both of them going to Americans: Bode Miller combined and Lindsey Vonn DH. Another, women’s GS, has the padlock on the door with Italian Denise Karbon holding an 181-point lead and two races remaining. It’s possible Elisabeth Goergl could take the hinges off and get by but the chances are pretty slim. Karbon needs to finish 12th or better in either of the two remaining races to close the lock while Goergl needs to win out to have any chance.
    The other nine titles, though, are in doubt; none more so than the overall titles and the U.S. has players in both those contests.
    At Whistler that drama began to play out.
    The men faced a super G and a GS, the former one of seven and the first in a month, the latter one of eight and the first in a month and a half. There were some well-rested racers in both events, and some pretty worn down all-around skiers trying to keep pace.
    In conditions with spring-like qualities, the super G went to Austria’s Christoph Gruber, his first win in more than a year. Hannes Reichelt was second and Slovene Ales Gorza got his country’s first super G podium in third, thanks in part to an early start position.
    Gruber and Reichelt are tied for second in the SG standings behind Swiss Didier Cuche. Technically any one of 17 men could win the title, with at least six in serious contention. Benjamin Raich, Mario Scheiber and Marco Buechel all have a legitimate shot but Cuche will have to falter for any of them to take the crown. At Whistler he finished comfortably in seventh, four tenths out in an unusually tight race.
    The super G was also an unusually poor one for the Americans. “I was quite surprised,” said head coach Phil McNichol. “I definitely didn’t anticipate falling on our faces as hard as we did today.” Bode Miller, Marco Sullivan, Ted Ligety and Kevin Francis all failed to finish, accounting for 40 percent of all the DNFs in the race.
    For Miller, who has started every race this season, the super G represented the best chance of the week to put some distance between himself and Raich in the race for the overall title. “The super G was super disappointing,” said Miller’s coach John McBride. “We kind of made an equipment miscalculation that didn’t pay off.” It is possible, it appears, to take too many risks before even getting on course.
    For the rest of the guys it was some pretty sketchy skiing. Steven Nyman was the only American scoring points and he was in 25th place.
    “The course was a lot of fun,” he said. “The skiing was all right, but the course was rad. There’s lots of terrain and good speed. It’s coming so fast you’ve got to be on top of it. This was a race of least mistakes … and I made a ton of them. I don’t think there was much luck involved today for Gruber. He just executed really, really well.”
     Raich skied a tactically sound run to finish 11th and pick up 24 points on Miller.

Men’s GS title appears wide open
The men then faced their first GS in a moon and a half, a race in which Raich figured to have an advantage. Of all the World Cup titles out there, none is more undecided than men’s GS.
    The race did little to determine the final outcome as standings leader Daniel Albrecht failed to finish and third ranked Kalle Palander is done for the season. Raich finished third in the race and moved into the standings lead and Ted Ligety finished fourth to move to second in the standings. Manfred Moelgg finished sixth to move to third in the standings but the end results were nine guys within 100 points of first and some pretty desperate racing slated for the near future. Ligety looks forward to that.
    “This hill really doesn’t suit me,” he said, “It’s full arcing turns the whole way.” He’d rather see more steepness and with Kranjska Gora and Bormio remaining he’s confident he can make a run at the GS crown.
    The race also impacted the overall standings. Reichelt got the win, the third of his career and his third in North America. Cuche skied to second and put himself into contention to challenge Raich or Miller should either falter down the stretch. Miller put the pressure on Raich with a strong second run forcing the Austrian to race to the finish. He gave back another 24 points, but maintained the overall lead by 45 points. Both had better be careful of Cuche, however. The Swiss moved within 105 points of the lead.

Styger wins downhill, Vonn takes title
There was plenty of reason for celebration after the women’s downhill. The Swiss were elated by the first downhill win of Nadia Styger’s nine-season career. The U.S. got its third downhill title in history and first since 1996 when Lindsey Vonn finished second. Just to add a little spice to the U.S. feast, Julia Mancuso charged to third.
    Vonn certainly had the win but for a “brain fart” just above the final jump when she miscalculated and got, as she said, “sucked low of the line.” She demonstrated the scope of her abilities in recovering and finishing, falling 0.01 of a second shy of Styger’s time. Mancuso had a fabulous run as well to finish less than two tenths behind the Swiss and said she maybe took things a little less seriously and concentrated on skiing without trying to be too perfect.
    The race was a keeper for the North Americans. Britt Janyk rode home slope knowledge into fourth, Kelly VanderBeek was ninth and Emily Brydon 17th. Renate Goetschl finished fifth to lead three Austrians into the top 10, but the title she has won five times before will not be hers this season.
    In the women’s race for the overall title, Nicole Hosp maintained contact with Vonn by taking 15th. Slalom star Marlies Schild, displaying much improved abilities in the speed disciplines all season, used them to good result finishing 11th in the race. Elisabeth Goergl finished seventh and Anja Paerson finished sixth. The only top contender taking a major hit was Maria Riesch, who exited the course at the same spot Vonn had her, ahh, mental blip.

Riesch tallies first combined win
Of all the races on the calendar, combined seems best suited to pit overall skiers against one another fairly. The final race of the Olympic test was a super G/slalom super combined.
    When Hosp beat Vonn in the super G leg it appeared things might go very awry from conventional wisdom. Vonn was a half second off the pace after the first 13 seconds of the course. “It’s pretty
hard to be that slow,” she said, noting that teammate Stacey Cook, also on Rossignol skis and using the same technician, had been plenty fast over the same stretch. “I think,” she said, “it was just a headwind.”
    Riesch, definitely motivated by the debacle in downhill, put down an exceptional SG run to lead at the midpoint, and had just enough margin to hold off the charge of the slalom skiers for her first combined win.
    She lamented the lost opportunity of the downhill as the win clarified how much closer to the top of the overall rankings she might have moved.
    “I could have scored so many points here this week,” she said, “and also other occasions. It is hard to believe that it was my third crash in downhill this winter. They surely cost me a lot of points, but I rather don’t think about this. There are still important races left on the program and, who knows, I might be luckier.” With some of those coming races in her native Germany, she will at least have fan support.
    Every race seems to increase in importance as the number of opportunities dwindles with the calendar. The Whistler combined wound up with the top seven women in the overall standings in the top seven places of the race. Only the order was different.
    Vonn, somewhat amazingly, outskied Hosp in the slalom, finished two placings back in the final count and lost just 10 points despite an unlucky super G run.
    Riesch won, obviously gaining ground on everyone. She sits third in the overall standings. Marlies Schild, with her usual blazing slalom run, finished second in the combined and sits fourth in the standings, 30 points behind Riesch. Anja Paerson, experiencing as uneven a season as she has had in a decade, finished third in the combined and stays in contact with the leaders in seventh overall. Hosp finished fourth to gain 10 on Vonn and sits second overall, now 54 points behind. Goergl was fifth in the race and holds fifth on the overall list as well and Mancuso, who ran into significant troubles high on the slalom leg, did exceptionally well to hold it together for a seventh-place finish on the day and is sixth overall. It was all really pretty remarkable and sent many a journalist scrambling for a calculator.
    It appears the most pressure-packed World Cup finale in some time is on the horizon.