The World Cup According to Grande: Lindsey Delivers and so does Jules!

LINDSEY DELIVERS! JULIA PROVES IT AGAIN, SHE IS BIG-TIME.

Excellent job ladies!For Lindsey,  it is the biggest prize in the sport. Olympic Gold in the Downhill! It allows you to relax and do your job for the rest of your career with supreme confidence. No one can ever take it away and you can parlay it into a career beyond our sport. It should lead to more focus that comes easier in the following disciplines. With the Super Kombi tomorrow and the Saturday Super-G coming up, Lindsey can just know she is the best and accomplished what is likely a life-long dream. The pressure is gone. And on top of that, she already knows she is the best Kombi and Super G skier in the world. In fact, she already owns this season’s Super G globe!

The only thing holding her back could be her shin-bang problem. Make no mistake, it is a nasty injury and it hurts a lot. And the biggest problem is that flexing the boot is the key to the sport.  So putting more and more pressure on the leg is not going to help. Downhill has so few turns and they are so long that it probably hurts it less. Although, the roughness of the lower track likely annoyed it a bit. I think the biggest hurdle she has with her pain management is going to be the slalom portion of the Kombi. I have no idea how much she has been able to train slalom of late and I would guess not at all with all the noise that has been hitting the mainstream media about the shin. So she doesn’t know how it will react and if she can event get the job done. And further, do you sacrifice a shot at Olympic Super-G Gold for the Kombi? And what about the World Cup Overall? How much are you willing to endure and how long will it last as the World Cup season re-starts after the Games? Do you risk sitting on the sidelines watching the Overall disappear if you re-injure or further irritate the shin by continuing to race through the Olympics? I would not be surprised at all to see Lindsey power through the Kombi and Super-G and then pull-out of the tech events to get healthy for the push at the World Cup Overall globe. I know it would be an unprecedented move but she has not been sharp in GS at all of late and her slalom seems to be struggling too. But either way, it is pure speculation on my part. Great job Lins! You deserve it!

And for Julia, she just showed you that she is big-time. She was the Gold Medalist in GS in Torino in 2006. I sat in the finish area with my family watching her deal with the nasty, rolling hill in Sestriere. With a ton of new snow over the top of slick injected snow. The visibility was awful and she had the lead after run 1. She started 30 and held off the challengers to take home the Gold Medal and did it with a very solid performance.  She has never choked. She might have lost her way a little after Torino and maybe now she is back? Ready to respect it more? But what did anyone expect. She was 21 years old in Torino and has been on an international tear since she showed on the scene in Topolino and Whistler as a J3. The same is true of Lindsey.  Now, after pretty much disappearing from the World Cup top 7 in all of her disciplines over the last 3 years, she is back. She is back because the stage is big, and she knows it. And I will tell you this, she can ski all the disciplines, it is simply up to her if she is going to move on to grab some more precious metal.  IF Julia decides to continue past Whistler/Vancouver and IF Lindsey decides to do the same, they could dominate women’s skiing for 2 more Olympiads! They were born in 1984. They are children. They have so much more to learn and so much more to conquer. I can only hope they stick it out until 2018.

And what is the other benefit of all this excellence early in the Games? With 3 medals in 2 events, our program is looking fantastic. And that momentum, the feeling in your belly, just feeds on itself. It could be a huge Olympics for the USA. They are all happy, they are all relaxed because they did not have to go a long time before a medal came for either gender.  So now everyone is thinking landslide, buried in Gold and Silver and Bronze. A celebratory toast every night is what they now see in front of them. And I will tell you, I have been on both sides of it. I have been in St. Moritz for the World Championships when we had Bode pulling a tie with Hermann for silver in Super G and Clarkie and Jonna going 2-3 on the first 2 days. We thought we could do no wrong. Bode pulled off the amazing Kombi win and with the Miller/Schlopy podium in GS it was sensational. We felt bathed in attention and FIS medals. And Bormio in 2005 felt the same. Julia was 21 and taunting Daron Rahlves, 11 years her senior, with the color of her medals.  Most of the time you are happy to have one of any color, let alone be able to taunt someone else with the color of your multiple medals.

Then came Torino, Ted wearing Gold on day 1. Mr. Marolt having stirred the pot with his “Best in the World” rhetoric. We all knew that “Best in the World” is really measured by globes and Nations Cup, not 2 weeks of success. It is about a year of success, of years of success one after the other. It’s about generational success.  We felt about to roll again. But Bode and Daron could not come through on the Downhill track where they had crushed it a year earlier, Lins was beat up from her crash in San Sicario and all of a sudden we were failures. Even though we had scored 2 gold medals! I watched us have no chance to win anything in Calgary in 1988. I was once a young coach in an era where winning one medal or even one World Cup race a year was considered a success, or even a coup! I remember an era not that long ago when we only had 1 Europa Cup spot to use in GS.  That means we only had one guy ranked in the top 100 in the world in that discipline.

Anyway, my point is simple. With the early medals comes optimism and the possibility of greatness at an unheard of level.  Keep your heads on straight, folks. Enjoy the wins, but keep working hard for another 10 days. You are all good enough to keep raking in medals. Ted can for sure win 3 if he executes his best stuff. Bode has 2 more in his range. Lins can win 2 more before we even blink on Saturday and Julia can win 3. She IS the defending Olympic Champion in GS, after all. And what about the others? The true dark horses who will be inspired by their friends’ achievements? Zamansky and Ford and Jitloff? Nolan Kasper and Jimmy Cochran and Weibrecht ? Hailey Duke and Megan McJames? Sarah Schleper and Leanne Smith? Chelsea Marshall or Kaylin Richardson and Ailic McKennis? They are all the best of all of us. They are there because they have shown the speed needed to get the job done. And if I am feeling this motivated by the performance so far, how do you think they feel? They must be dying to get out there and get their disciplines going. Stay focused boys and girls and keep working hard. Root for your friends and help keep them on the path they need to be on, to be the most memorable US Alpine Olympic Team ever.

We are all out here cheering as loud as we can and yelling at NBC for missing the boat!

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Greg “Grande” Needell grew up ski racing at Stratton Mountain, Vermont. After graduating from SMS he skied for NCAA Division 1 St. Lawrence University in Canton, NY where he was co-captain in 1986. Greg returned to SMS to coach there for five years serving as the Head Women’s Coach as well as the Head J2 Men’s Coach. He then moved to Mission Ridge in Wenatchee, Washington in 1992 to become the Program Director and Head Coach of the Mission Ridge Ski Club. In 1997, Greg became the Head Coach at Mammoth Mountain, California.

In 2002 Needell
was asked to join the U.S. Ski Team staff as a World Cup SL and GS coach. From 2002 to 2008 Needell helped lead the U.S. Ski Team Men to 43 wins, 105 podiums and 264 top ten finishes. Now at the helm of Alpine Race Consulting, Needell offers his knowledge and experience to clubs nationwide.

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