Decorated U.S. team will limp into World Championships at Val d'Isere

On paper, the U.S. Ski Team is sending one of its most decorated teams in history to the FIS Alpine World Ski Championships. In truth, the U.S. Ski Team limps in with some very big guns misfiring.

The team features 10 Olympians among its 17 members. All of these Olympians have World Championship experience, as does another member. With a look to the future, the team is also sending six rookies.

But the 2009 World Cup team, featuring all these skiers and more, has recorded fewer wins, fewer podiums and fewer top-10 placings than any U.S. team since 2001. With the single exception of Lindsey Vonn, the current World Cup overall standings leader, no one has scored a win and only Ted Ligety, Bode Miller and Marco Sullivan have recorded a top-three placing.

Ligety, in fact, has two podiums. The most recent was Pearl Harbor Day. That was 16 races ago.
On paper, the U.S. Ski Team is sending one of its most decorated teams in history to the FIS Alpine World Ski Championships. In truth, the U.S. Ski Team limps in with some very big guns misfiring.

The team features 10 Olympians among its 17 members. All of these Olympians have World Championship experience, as does another member. With a look to the future, the team is also sending six rookies.

But the 2009 World Cup team, featuring all these skiers and more, has recorded fewer wins, fewer podiums and fewer top-10 placings than any U.S. team since 2001. With the single exception of Lindsey Vonn, the current World Cup overall standings leader, no one has scored a win and only Ted Ligety, Bode Miller and Marco Sullivan have recorded a top-three placing.

Ligety, in fact, has two podiums. The most recent was Pearl Harbor Day. That was 16 races ago.

Last winter, at this point in the season, Ligety had twice as many podiums and nine top-five results. He’s got three top-five results this season and they were all in the last calendar year.

Miller, being Miller, is fighting his own demons. He smacked up his ankle back in December and he and the staff have been battling to find boots that both protect the ankle and make the skis work. It hasn’t been easy. He got DQ’d because a new pair of boots couldn’t pass the rigid measurement requirements of the FIS.

“His ankle is f—ed,” his coach, Forest Carey, reports. And it’s not getting better. Bode is so talented he has still brought in some podiums, two since he damaged the ankle and one before. But unless he skips Garmisch, he’s run in every single World Cup race held, plus a holiday special on a ramp in Moscow. The irony here is that Miller really wanted to win a World Championship slalom. That would give him a championship in all five disciplines, something that no one has ever done before. But the ankle bothers him most in slalom. When he ignores the pain, muscles start to “shut down,” which explains his return to the high DNF rate that plagued him in earlier seasons. He finished the slalom at Adelboden, but of his top-10 results this season, two came before the injury and the remaining four have all come in downhill, the event that puts the least stress on the ankle.

Marco Sullivan has been having a good season, though still not as sound as last, at least to this point. The Val d’Isere speed courses don’t fit the profiles he has historically done well on, but he has scored decent results on tough hills like Bormio (11th) and Kitzbuehel (16th SG, 24th DH). He’s improving and is among the best we’ve had, but he’s not an international favorite to win a medal at Worlds.

Of the remaining Olympians:

Sarah Schleper is coming off a two-year hiatus and a baby. She has been a star of some magnitude in the past, but her best result this year is 13th.

Julia Mancuso has physical drawbacks with a bad back.  She has been scoring points this season, but not in bunches. She has two top-10 results among the 13 races she’s scored in. She had five podiums at this point last season.

Resi Stiegler makes the team, but has not raced at all before this coming weekend at Garmisch. If she gets through the “race cycle” and feels good enough, coaches have said they will green-light her for the slalom.

Stacey Cook has one scoring result this season: a 25th in combined at Zauchensee;

Jimmy Cochran had three Cup top-10s at this point last season in seven completed races. This season his best result, of two, is 18th.

Steven Nyman has a bruise on his leg and skipped Kitzbuehel. He expects to race at Garmisch and be ready for Worlds. He’s got just three scores this season but two of them are top-10 results. That’s more top-10s than he had for all of last season.

Tim Jitloff, who has world championship, but not Olympic, experience, has recorded three scoring finishes this season, the best a 15th.

The rookies — Erik Fisher, Andrew Weibrecht, Jake Zamansky, Hailey Duke, Chelsea Marshall and Megan McJames — are all stellar ski racers and each has shown considerable improvement this season. They are not likely to produce medals, however. At least not this season.

Statistically, Fisher and Duke have both recorded top-10 results and Weibrecht had shown an ability on the tougher downhill courses so don’t write the rookies completely off.

The only solid medal hope, the one U.S. skier a smart gambler would bet on, is Vonn.