WC Rewind: Streif flexes its muscles yet again

As usual, the Hahenkamm in Kitzbühel reminded us this season just how remarkable and dangerous a sport alpine ski racing is.
The Streif is widely considered the most treacherous, demanding, unforgiving downhill track in ski racing. This season it enhanced that reputation, causing serious bodily harm to at least four competitors. Forerunner Patrick Hinterseer broke two vertebrae, Czech Ondrej Bank and Austrian Andreas Buder both broke their right legs and American Scott Macartney slammed his head into the ice hard enough to smash his helmet and sustain a nasty concussion.
AS USUAL, the Hahenkamm in Kitzbühel reminded us this season just how remarkable and dangerous a sport alpine ski racing is.
The Streif is widely considered the most treacherous, demanding, unforgiving downhill track in ski racing. This season it enhanced that reputation, causing serious bodily harm to at least four competitors. Forerunner Patrick Hinterseer broke two vertebrae, Czech Ondrej Bank and Austrian Andreas Buder both broke their right legs and American Scott Macartney slammed his head into the ice hard enough to smash his helmet and sustain a nasty concussion.
    “When you are at the start you wonder how it is possible to get down that icy, bumpy slope,” said Didier Cuche, the very guy who would end up winning the 68th Hahenkamm downhill trophy. Once started, there is no time to ponder one's fate. In training skiers reached 60 kph in less than three seconds, faster than many cars could.

Veterans rule the day in super G
The super G podium was — with just a little fudging — the oldest in history. Marco Buechel, 36, got the win just ahead of Hermann Maier, 35. The third-place tie between Cuche and Mario Scheiber brought in the candy makers. Cuche made the case at 33. Scheiber defeated it 25. Historically the placing by Maier was significant. The winningest active skier with 53 wins, the Kitzbühel super G has long been his private domain, having won five of the nine held.
    "I was nervous," said Buechel. "especially when Hermann was coming down."
    Maier said he just took too direct a line and paid the price.
    Significant in the super G, and perhaps a harbinger, was the results of two relative youngsters from North America. Canadian Robbie Dixon started 43rd and finished sixth. Marco Sullivan, despite busting up his skis in a downhill training crash two days previous, started 52nd and made the top 10.
    "I had been watching the guys in the TV," Sullivan said, "and I knew you could just put your nose in it and charge the whole thing. … There were a few soft trouble spots, but I could see them on TV so I knew where to avoid them." Call it instant analysis in the start house.

Cuche claims Hahnenkamm DH
The downhill, though, is the big race at Kitzbühel, and in a year with no Olympics or World Championships, perhaps the biggest single race of the season.
    We'll let the second-place finisher describe what it is that let Didier Cuche claim the angular Hahenkamm DH trophy.
    "On the big turns he is as technically sound as anybody, on the gliding he is as fast as anybody except maybe [Michael] Walchhofer, and in the air he’s better than everybody else in the World Cup," said Bode Miller. "You put those things together, you’d expect to see someone winning all the time." Cuche joined Miller's ski company Head last season, and now, Miller naturally says, "… he's on the best skis out there and as tough as anybody."
    Miller might have won the race, but ran into a considerable amount of trouble coming out of the Steilhang, ran up onto the fencing and melted enough plastic onto the bottom of his ski that he probably shouldn't have placed as well as he did.
    "The light was kind of flat and I couldn't see my landing," Miller said. "There's a pretty big bump at the end of that turn and it just kicked me a little outside." In the type of move we've come to expect from Miller, he managed to stay upright on one ski and rode that up on and then off the fencing. "It was bad management right there," he said. "an operational error on my part."
    Mario Scheiber picked up his second podium in two days in third.
    The rest of the U.S. crew, badly shaken by the crash of teammate Macartney and the visual impact of his body convulsing, unconscious in the finish, had moderate results.
    Miller's second set him up nicely for the conventionally scored combined, tallied on paper (or electrons) after the final slalom by adding times from it and the downhill.

Grange keeps on rolling; Miller gets record 28th win
Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Grange edged Jens Byggmark for the slalom win amidst the normal swirling mysteries and secrets of Kitzbühel. Third-, fourth- and fifth-place finishers Mario Matt, Julien Lizeroux and Rainer Schoenfelder used a new ski from Fischer with a hole in the tip. But it was Grange asserting his authority in slalom, winning his third straight slalom and threatening to run away with the season title.
    When they tabulated the results, Bode Miller had won the combined, for the 28th career win, one more than the legendary Phil Mahre, to become the most prolific World Cup winner in history. Between Bode and Phil they have won 30 percent of the U.S. total.
    More importantly, Bode Miller, at 30, showed he has matured enough to take advantage of opportunity. "He skied smart," said his coach John McBride. Meaning he did not take unnecessary risks, finished the slalom in 14th and took what he called "The easiest win."
    Benjamin Raich took the event in the same direction, skiing to 14th in the downhill and seventh in the slalom for second in the combined with Rainer Schoenfelder getting third.

The crazy slopes of Schladming
From Kitzbühel the annual trek moves 132 kilometers down highway B164 to Schladming for perhaps the only race on the tour that can challenge Kitzbühel for rowdiness — the Night Slalom.
    Rain had drenched the course before the race began and the course had suffered for it. Ted Ligety started 13th and said he hadn't seen holes that big on a course since he'd been running FIS races, which goes back at least three years.
    Grange skied solidly, taking minimal risk and Mario Matt, riding the crest of enthusiasm supplied by 50,000 slightly mad Austrian fans, took many to gather in his second win of the season without using the new holed skis.
    First-run leader Manfred Moelgg held on for third place while Ligety, in bib 13, had a smoking — literally, due to the flares in the crowd — second run for fourth. He was the only skier to make the top eight who hadn't started the first run in the top eight.

Another classic weekend at Cortina
While all this was going on the women were facing down their own classic events, a downhill and two super G's at Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy.
    With temperatures bouncing back and forth over the freezing point it was difficult to gauge the course, and falling wet snow forced organizers to push the makeup SG from Aspen from Friday to Monday and cancel all but one delayed training run. But downhill day was colder, the course firmer, and Lindsey Vonn was in her element. She won in impressive fashion with the largest margin
of the women's downhill season ahead of Anja Paerson. The Canadians crushed the course, putting three into the top six, a Canadian women's record, with Emily Brydon third, her roommate Kelly Vanderbeek fourth and Britt Janyk sixth just behind Austrian Renate Goetschl.
    In the first super G the situation was a bit different. It was warm, and got warmer during the race. Maria Holaus, the first skier on the course, got on snow that had set-up overnight and rode it to the win. Coming in second was Julia Mancuso with a remarkable performance considering she started 19th. It was a lukewarm kiss-your-sister kind of result. Though she allowed it was nice to be second after missing that perch on the podium a couple of times this season by hundredths of a second, she is still looking for her first win of the season.
    Vonn rolled in fifth, just two hundredths behind Nicole Hosp in third and one hundredth behind Brydon in fourth. Britt Janyk continued the potent North America show in sixth one more tick of the hundredth clock back.
    The podium finish by Mancuso gave the U.S. team its seventh of the season, surpassing the January marks of the past three seasons (six) and tying the record set in 1982. With a full weekend of racing remaining in January that mark could topple.
    The second super G, shifted at the last hour to Monday, was held in a nearly empty stadium. That did little to sour Maria Riesch, however as the oft-injured German collected her first win in two years. "It was perfect for me," she said. She was particularly good in the second half of the course and overtook leader Elisabeth Goergl, who slipped to second. Coming in third was Goetschl, indicating she may be mending from a pair of off-season knee surgeries. It was her 22nd career podium scored at Cortina. Vonn was fourth, again a single tick away from a better placing, Janyk was fifth and Mancuso sixth.

    — With contributions from The Associated Press, Jack Shaw, Patrick Lang and Steve Porino.