Following his runner-up finish in Saturday’s Hahnenkamm downhill on the circuit’s toughest and most dangerous Streif course, Bode Miller questioned why organizers toyed with the final jump throughout the week. Saturday, Miller’s U.S. teammate Scott Macartney suffered a serious head injury after crashing off the jump.
FOLLOWING HIS runner-up finish in Saturday’s Hahnenkamm downhill on the circuit’s toughest and most dangerous Streif course, Bode Miller questioned why organizers toyed with the final jump throughout the week. Saturday, Miller’s U.S. teammate Scott Macartney suffered a serious head injury after crashing off the jump.
    “You don’t expect the organizers to try to make the course more bumpy or more tough than the hill is. There’s no reason to do that,” Miller said. “We’re going to be pushing the limits of what the course provides, we’re going to make it on the edge anyways because that’s how you go the fastest. Like a course like this, that’s known as dangerous and that’s known to have sections that are unforgiving and sections where you crash that you’re going straight into the fence, and to make it worse just to make it spectacular, I think that’s irresponsible and just bad form.”
    Miller said the final jump was prepared differently in each training run. Saturday, he said there was loose snow on the jump during inspection.
    “That jump is completely dysfunctional,” Miller said. “… It’s just not the way to manage a downhill where guys can easily get hurt or get killed. The people who make those decisions aren’t running the course; we’re the ones running the course and we don’t have any say in it.
    “… On top of that, earlier this week to see the forerunners that they were sending down the course, you see little young kids going off the last jump and hurting themselves is just a bummer, you don’t want to see that. And then to have one of my close friends go off it and knock himself out and be convulsing on the snow, that’s not the kind of stuff you want to see before you have to run the course. It puts you in a bad state of mind.”
Miller added that there’s no need to make the classic Streif course, as he termed, “spectacular.”
    “I think it’s just not fair. They act like they need to pump up the course or make it bumpier, or make the jumps different. But it’s people’s lives that are at stake there.”

    — Jack Shaw