U.S. men make fresh tracks toward Colorado

A handful of slalom racers from the U.S. men’s team will depart for Colorado Wednesday for continued preseason training, just days after getting back from Europe and a little more than a week before some will head back across the Atlantic.

A HANDFUL OF SLALOM RACERS from the U.S. men’s team will depart for Colorado Wednesday for continued preseason training, just days after getting back from Europe and a little more than a week before some will head back across the Atlantic.
    With the World Cup season now set to kick off with men and women’s slalom races Nov. 11-12 in Levi, Finland, in the wake of last weekend’s canceled openers in Sölden, Austria, the Colorado high country will serve as the primary training base for U.S. racers throughout the month of November.
    U.S. men’s slalom/GS coach Greg Needell said four U.S. men — Ted Ligety, Bode Miller, Jimmy Cochran and Tom Rothrock — will compete in the opening slalom in Levi. Those not bound for Finland will set up camp on Keystone’s North Peak over the next week, taking advantage of exclusive access to the hill for training in preparation for upcoming World Cup races in Beaver Creek and Canada’s Lake Louise.
    “Every year, Colorado is my favorite camp. It’s home to us,” said Jake Zamansky, an Aspen native and the reigning NorAm overall champ, who will get plenty of World Cup starts this season.
    “It’s the only time of the year we spend at home skiing in our country. The snow’s typically good there, and it sounds like the resorts are having their best year ever.”
    The Colorado mountains currently have a nice blanket of natural snow coupled with plenty of the manmade variety. It’s a far cry from the conditions Zamansky and his teammates experienced in Austria, where shorts and flip-flops replaced coats and gloves in sunny Sölden.
    “Every day we were down at Pitztal playing tennis, sitting in the sun [with] no shirt, shorts. It was warm, and we knew something would have to happen for there to be a race,” Zamansky said. “We needed a little snow, and then when that storm came through it was a warm one. At that point, a lot of us had a good idea it wasn’t going to happen. When you go that far, it’s unfortunate.”
    Even with the cancellation of the opening GS, Zamansky and his teammates got in some training runs on the Pitztal glacier, continuing to build on a strong summer of camps in the Southern Hemisphere. Needell said the entire team was rounding into top form and eager to race.
     “Ted and Bode were skiing very well, and the other guys were doing well, too … just in general a little off the pace behind Bode and Ted, which is probably expected. But they were close enough to be excited about racing,” Needell said. “[T.J.] Lanning and Zamansky were usually fighting it out for the fastest runs of the day. Everyone was really excited about racing, so it was a bummer when it got canceled. It was a little bit of a letdown throughout the entire World Cup. The day after, everyone seemed sort of flat and had a hard time getting motivated.”
    Zamansky said he was disappointed not to race, but he’s also not a big fan of World Cups in October.    
    “I think that it pushes us to make our season too long and there’s too much emphasis on young kids being forced to ski early in the year because that’s what the best guys do and they feel they have to do that,” he said. “I don’t think it’s that big of a deal, but once you’re over there that’s the way it is. You’ve gotta be ready to go.”
    This is a pivotal season for the 25-year-old Zamansky, who switched from Fischer to Rossignol skis during the off-season and had strong camps in both New Zealand and Chile. Zamansky’s goal is to finish in the top 20 in the World Cup GS standings and make the World Championships team.
    “I’m getting to that age where it’s time to make that move,” he said. “I just have to focus on putting down solid, fast runs at Keystone every day, working on going fast and doing what I need to be doing on World Cup.
    “The summer was actually pretty cool because there wasn’t one person dominating every camp or every day or every event. It’s a young team and even with Bode around it seems there were still a lot of fast guys who won runs in training every single day. We have the speed, we just have to do it in races. I think we’re all feeling pretty good and confident and ready to go.”
    On the injury front, Ligety will train in Colorado and should be near full strength for Levi after the Olympic combined gold medalist suffered a hand injury training last week at Pitztal. Last Tuesday, Ligety bashed his right hand on a gate during giant slalom training, reportedly injuring the index finger below his knuckle. Ligety flew home last Wednesday for treatment but likely would have raced in Sölden had the weather cooperated, a USSA source said.

— Don Cameron contributed to this report