Hermann Maier wins overall and Bode Miller takes GS title via race cancellation

Hermann Maier wins overall and Bode Miller takes GS title via race cancellation{mosimage}A controversial jury decision has made Hermann Maier of Austria the overall winner of the alpine World Cup, and crowned Bode Miller of the United States as the giant slalom discipline winner.

Maier’s triumph is an incredible accomplishment for a man who nearly lost his leg in a motorcycle accident in the fall of 2001. Miller, meanwhile, becomes the first American man to win the GS title since Phil Mahre took it home in 1982 and 1983.

Neither athlete was even on the mountain when they won their respective trophies. Miller was in his Audi, driving back to his hotel.

Nine racers into the second run of the final giant slalom of the season, heavy fog moved in on Sestriere, Italy, causing a lengthy course delay. After several hours of waiting, the race jury convened and decided to cancel the race.

That means Miller, who crashed on the first run, wins the World Cup giant slalom discipline title, a longstanding personal goal. The only racer who could have stopped him in that quest was Kalle Palander of Finland. Palander needed to finish in first or second to win the 61 points required to surpass Miller. Palander was the second-fastest racer on the first run, 0.99 seconds behind first-run leader Benjamin Raich of Austria.

The cancellation means that Maier wins the overall World Cup title, because even if Raich wins Sunday’s slalom, he cannot pick up enough points to pass Maier, who has 1265 points. Raich has 1113 points, and a win counts for 100.

At the time of the cancellation, American Daron Rahlves had the fastest two-run combined time. He had beaten World Cup heavyweights such as Maier, Stephan Eberharter, Didier Cuche and Christian Mayer, and was guaranteed at least an 11th-place finish, his best GS result ever.

The jury meeting took place in the finish area, as hundreds of coaches and reporters lingered nearby. In addition to the race jury, FIS president Gian-Franco Kasper, FIS marketing director Christian Knauth, various television executives and local hoteliers took part in the deliberations. Italian mountain police, known as “Carabinieri,” cordoned off the proceedings. When it was over, Gunther Hujara, the race director for the FIS and leader of the race jury, made the following statement:

“The ladies program would go back and everything would be changed into a finishing of the program at three o clock. We have many TV stations that step out at later than 1:45. That’s one side. We would be ready to go on the sport side, but then we have another fact now. We have asked for all the weather forecasts into tomorrow and the weather forecasts tells exactly that this weather will stay now, that we will get 10 centimeters of snow overnight, but then it should stop in the early morning, we can’t say when. Then the fog and the low clouds stay until the early morning into ten o’clock maybe into mid-day.

“The risk is too high, if we change the program, that the ladies lose also their GS by having our second run [tomorrow morning]. This is too much coming together. All the facts coming together, the jury of the men decided that the men’s GS is cancelled. The men’s GS is cancelled and tomorrow the original program goes on with the slalom. That’s it.”

Kalle Palander’s coach Christian Leitner, who had refused to speak to reporters until after the jury’s decision had been made, said that he would have liked to see organizers re-schedule the second run for Sunday morning:

“Kalle lost his crystal on the green table,” said Leitner, using what appears to be a gambling metaphor. “What is more bad? He had no chance on the snow. In the moment after the first run, he won the crystal. Actually it’s not Bode Miller, it’s Kalle Palander. Okay, but it’s cancelled. Bode Miller wins it. But he won the crystal on the green table. By the decision of the FIS, but he did not win the crystal on the slope. He won the crystal by the decision of Hujara.”

Phil McNichol, the head coach for the U.S. Ski Team’s men’s team, said that Miller would have liked to see Palander have a shot at taking Miller down. “Typically, you would not see this even come up as a proposal on a slalom/GS weekend,” said McNichol, referring to the possibility of re-scheduling the second run of a race for a later date. “But because this weather situation decides titles, they’re trying to do the fairest thing, which is to get a race to its completion. But what do you say? It impacts the women tomorrow, there’s 50 centimeters of snow coming tonight, the entire town is booked out. There’s no hotel space to do a day extra. You can’t do all the work necessary to prepare for the slalom.

“You have guys that are racing slalom and GS who have been standing around in the cold all day, who would now have to prepare for a GS run and then switch over to run slalom. That’s not even talking about television rights. It’s very interesting, complex. As we know, in our sport, sometimes things go the way they go, like at Schladming. But you always see that there is the desire to do what’s impossible.”

Toni Giger, the head coach of the powerful Austrian men’s team, was in the strange position of having seen one of his athletes, Maier, benefit from the misfortune of another, Raich, who was leading the GS by a second after one run and remains a contender in slalom.

“This season there were many races that by my opinion that the conditions were over the limit,” said Giger. “Like at Adelboden, it was raining there. This is one of those races. If we have this race at the end, I think it’s more important that you have to race the whole season. For the World Cup, it’s only one race of 40 races. It’s the same for Palander. He had a very good chance to win the GS title, but it’s the same for him.”