Kjetil Jansrud is on a roll in speed so far this season. GEPA

BEAVER CREEK, Colo. – In today’s first downhill training run on the famed Birds of Prey track, Norwegian Kjetil Jansrud was once again the one to beat. After sweeping the training run, the downhill, and the super G in Lake Louise Jansrud has kept his momentum and finished the first training on the 2015 World Championships slope in 1:40:06, 0.27 seconds faster than Swiss Patrick Kueng who finished second and Italian Peter Fill who skied into third.

With today, Jansrud has skied the fastest line every time he left the start gate in a speed event this season, and today’s training confirmed that Lake Louise wasn’t a fluke.

“For me skiing is always a learning process, I try to learn from my mistakes but also from my good runs so I am trying to build on what I did in Lake Louise. I think it’s a mind game, how you go into these first races of the season and I do think there is such a thing as momentum. Now I feel as if I can relax my shoulders a bit and go with the flow knowing that the skiing I showed in Lake Louise is enough and that’s an advantage,” Jansrud explained.

His teammate Aksel Lund Svindal dominated the speed events in the past year, but with him out for most if not all of this season due to a torn Achilles tendon, the focus quickly switched to Jansrud in the past week.

“In Soelden when Aksel got injured we knew someone in the team had to step up. But I never felt I was in Aksel’s shadow, it’s not how our team works,” noted Jansrud. “He has been the captain, the leader but it’s not like now that he is gone it’s my first chance to shine, it’s not the way you think as an athlete. If I could have chosen I would definitely have had him in Lake Louise as that would mean we could have had an even stronger team.”

Steven Nyman was the fastest American, tying Johan Clarey with the fifth-fastest run. Jared Goldberg followed in 10th.

Conditions on the Birds of Prey were fantastic and the course, which was changed slightly compared to last years’ by new FIS Race Director Hannes Trinkl, got very positive feedback from most skiers.

Canadian Jan Hudec, who started with bib 1, was thrilled with the course.

“I haven’t had this much fun skiing in a long time. The course runs so smoothly and even though the jumps are big the landings are perfect and all I could think once down is how I wanted to do it again and again,” Hudec said after his run.

One more training is scheduled for Wednesday while Thursday will be a day off, allowing the racers to rest and get ready for the busy days of racing on Friday (downhill), Saturday (super G), and Sunday (giant slalom).

Release courtesy of FIS

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