Birds of Prey: Theaux fastest in Training Run 2

Adrien Theaux in the Birds of Prey finish area.

BEAVER CREEK, Colo. – The second men’s downhill training run on the Birds of Prey track saw Frenchman Adrien Theaux come away with the fastest time of the morning, improving upon his 25th-place finish in the first training run. His time of 1:40:30 landed him 0.19 ahead of Italian Peter Fill and 0.32 ahead of Fill’s teammate Dominik Paris.

“It’s better,” Theaux said of his skiing compared to yesterday, adding that he changed some settings on his skis. “For sure, the feeling was better and the time too – so I am happy. It’s better than Lake Louise. Lake Louise was good, but I think I did mistakes with my skis so now it’s coming. We didn’t ski a lot this summer with the bad weather conditions, and I changed skis this summer – it’s difficult to find a good set-up quickly, but it’s coming better.”

Theaux had the first podium of his career here – second in the super G in 2010 – but has struggled to find the feeling and confidence on the slope in the years since. This year, he says he feels more comfortable on the slope and has been impressed with the snow conditions that he’s seen on the course season after season.

“This year is good; I like the slope, I like the snow,” said Theaux of the course prep. “The last four years were not very good for me, but I really like the slope; I like the jumps I like the speed – everything.”

Norwegian Kjetil Jansrud, the winner of both races in Lake Louise and tops in the first training run yesterday (Dec. 2), tried to push the limit on the course today to find more speed, but ran into some trouble and ultimately finished fifth on the morning.

“Today I thought I would experiment a little bit with my line,” said Jansrud. “I had a good run yesterday, and I tried to find a little additional speed today. At least I tried, and I think I’m ready for Friday. This is by far the best hill we are skiing and the best conditions we have every year. It’s not very icy or tough, but it’s still compact snow, and it’s a dream to ski on.”

The Americans had another strong day on the Birds of Prey track with Travis Ganong leading the charge in fourth, only 0.37 off the leader Theaux. In many ways he is happy to be out competing right now after injuring his tibial plateau training earlier in November. He said he felt that he need to adjust his skiing to be physically prepared for the race on Friday. The plan worked well and resulted in a strong finish.

“My knee hurt a lot yesterday from the jumps, so I was a little easy today, but the run was fast,” said Ganong. “I stood up a little bit before all the jumps because of my knee; I didn’t want to go that big, save it for the race. With the bone bruise that I have in my tibial plateau, I need to be really careful. In Lake Louise there were no jumps, so I didn’t have to worry about it, but here, right away, I felt it – so on race day I need to just be careful and tuck off the jumps and go for it a little bit more.”

The course set this year has been described by some athletes as more open, with less turns, more speed and bigger jumps, similar to course sets here 10 years ago. The reaction has been very positive with “fun” being a common term used to describe the course, conditions and set.

“The snow is always perfect so it’s still holding up great; there’s not even a mark on it from yesterday, it’s amazing,” said Ganong. “The track is just way more open, forgiving, there are no turns on the whole hill — just looking for speed everywhere and going down the fall line. In past years you had to have really good timing and quick switches and push really hard in certain sections and now it’s all just kind of cruisy all the way down to the bottom … it’s a real downhill. I never raced it when it was like this, I was talking to Steve [Nyman] and Marco [Sullivan], this is how it used to be; it’s fun, I’m looking forward to it.”

Ted Ligety and Steven Nyman rounded out the top-10 results for the Americans with the seventh and ninth-fastest times, respectively. Jared Goldberg continued his strong training runs from a late start number, running 47th to finish 14th, 1.16 off of the lead. Andrew Weibrecht finished 35th, Bryce Bennett, 37th, Sullivan, 38th, Wiley Maple, 54th, and Thomas Biesemeyer finished 68th to round out the Americans.

“As usual they prep it better than anybody else in the world, the snow is just epic,” said Nyman of the snow and course conditions. “Yesterday running four was just buttery smooth, you could do anything you wanted. Today was the same; nothing really changed on the course, they do such a good job, but what’s cool is the hill is so steep and so demanding, yet the snow’s so perfect. You can really just risk it; everybody’s pushing harder and harder and harder just to make it happen.

“I had some mistakes today. I nailed Russi’s Ride to Screech Owl yesterday, but today I kind of messed it up, and that’s a lot of the speed for the lower part so I definitely could make that up. But the stuff I missed yesterday, I feel I did a lot better today, so hopefully I can just put a full run together [in the race].”

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