by Hank McKee

It was beautiful in Bavaria today.

A little too nice.

Garmisch-Partenkirchen is in the heart of Bavaria and is hosting the world’s best alpine skiers over the next couple of weeks to determine world champions. But it feels and looks a lot more like spring out the Garmisch windows than February which does not make the organizers or FIS officials smile. According to the official weather forecast it should get colder by mid-week, so there’s no panic as yet, and the backdrop is certainly spectacular. Beautiful place Garmisch.

Good place for the World Championships.

To the decidedly non-important business of predicting winners be advised there is no magic formula. In fact the best educated guess can go way awry by the simplest of factors. But if you like looking for dark horses there’s been a few night black steeds making appearances on the World Cup just in time to have a little momentum rolling coming into the title event.

Momentum doesn’t get, for instance, much better than that Alexis Pinturault has put together. Since January 15 he has won three Europa Cup events to lead the overall and GS standings; has won the World Junior GS title for the second time and – in the first week of February – scored his first two sets of World Cup points, including an impressive sixth in super G. Add to this that he’s a member of a resurging French team that hasn’t had this kind of potential since 1972. Kid’s on a roll. Sky’s the limit. Saddle is on the horse.

Another Frenchman, Thomas Frey, just collected his first top 10 at Hinterstoder. … and a 12th. Just saying.

Or, how about Marcus Sandell. The Finnish racer would be a popular dark horse choice. He just finished seventh in the Hinterstoder GS, his first Cup result since March 2009. He’s the guy who had his left kidney removed after a crash into the rocks on the Pitzaler Glacier in the 2009-2010 preseason. Don’t know about you, but I’d like to see him do something spectacular other than wreck. That “agony of defeat” thing is a tough legacy to live with.

Dominik Paris sure opened some eyes at Chamonix. The courses at Garmisch aren’t real similar to Chamonix, but the guy sure showed some heart.

Bet a few of you noticed Tommy Ford coming into it this past weekend, too. Would that be sweet? Or Nolan Kasper who has been on a bit of a roll all season. Two good, consistently good, young American possibilities on the list.

And if your favorite dark horse isn’t Warner Nickerson with what he has managed to overcome with pure enthusiasm and no small amount of skill, well then, Zorro doesn’t ride a black horse. (Is that a lost reference on today’s junior racers?)  He made the team and with his result at Hinterstoder he will get the GS start. Talk about rolling up the sleeves and earning it, this guy just keeps coming. It’s hard to put anything past him. Check through the backlog of his blog if you want more of the story.

Statistically – in a generally speaking kind of way- it is the veteran skiers, the non-dark horses, who get it done at Olympics and World Championships. The theory is that the events are just too big to get the head where it needs to be to out-shoot the guys who have been there and know what to expect.

No body told Andrew Weibrecht that last season before his bronze medal run at the Olympics. Or Viktoria Rebensburg before she won the Olympic GS. So the feeling here is there will probably be a dark horse medal somewhere in the mix.

Who is that masked man?