Now it feels like a real World Cup season.
   Sure, Beaver Creek and Lake Louise, and Aspen for that matter, have held plenty of World Cup races. But with Val Gardena, we’re talking real tradition, the cornerstone of any sport.
    Val Gardena with the Kemelbucket (Camel Bumps), the Ciaslat, Nucia. It’s more romantic somehow. Homologation # 01 and an annual race that predates the World Cup, that says a lot about the place in the sport. Val Gardena also is a site that had not been kind to Americans. Before the weekend, the USA scoresheet read no wins and four podiums over 40 years. Update that to two wins and a fourth. Nice.
NOW IT FEELS LIKE a real World Cup season.
   Sure, Beaver Creek and Lake Louise, and Aspen for that matter, have held plenty of World Cup races. But with Val Gardena, we’re talking real tradition, the cornerstone of any sport.
Val Gardena with the Kemelbucket (Camel Bumps), the Ciaslat, Nucia. It’s more romantic somehow. Homologation # 01 and an annual race that predates the World Cup, that says a lot about the place in the sport. Val Gardena also is a site that had not been kind to Americans. Before the weekend, the USA scoresheet read no wins and four podiums over 40 years. Update that to two wins and a fourth. Nice.
    Now roll into Alta Badia, which also hadn’t been that kind to Americans. This is a hill that provides the opportunity for peer respect. GS winner Kalle Palander called it one of the “technically most fastidious” slopes on the World Cup. Put in the books the U.S. podium total at Alta Badia was upped by half.
    Yep, pretty good work week for the U.S. boys.
    Bode Miller, who gained the “Dolomiti Super Trophy” and a check for $33,000 for winning the overall weekend, was flat out excited about winning the Val Gardena super G, because his run was better than any he had produced this season, including training. That’s the way he thinks. He pushed the DH line just a bit too hard and wasn’t a factor there. With Daron Rahlves retired, having Bode dropping off the podium should have spelled the end of the U.S. chances. That would not be taking Steven Nyman into account.
    The T-shirt reads “Believin’ Steven.” The world is starting to.
    Despite not completing a training run, Nyman felt he knew what he had to do, felt that after two trips to the Italian site he had dialed the old tradition-drenched, air-heavy course in.
    Tech rep Leo Mussi did have history with the Saslong course. He had helped retired Italian downhill legend Kristian Ghedina to four wins at Val Gardena and he knew the old pair of skis in the quiver, the pair with the delaminated topsheet, would be fast in the conditions Val Gardena presented. Steven was believin’ Mussi, and happily took those beat-up old skis of Ghedina’s to the start. Up there, waiting for his start in the lodge, he watched Marco Sullivan rip the course for what turned out to be fourth place — itself a top-four U.S. result on the course.
    “I was up in the lodge watching his run and I was like, ‘Yeah, dude.’ We had talked about what he needed to do. He had been so fast up on top, but he gets to the Ciaslong and I don’t think he’d made it past that, ever. That’s where all the terrain starts happening and all the turns. And he nailed it today. So I’m cheering him on,” which was a bit baffling to the other competitors up there, but seems just so natural for a young band of brothers. Neither of the two had completed a training run, but now, on race day, “Sully” has made it down with a good run and Nyman knows he got the skis. Wham bam, next thing you know America has its first-ever Val Gardena DH winner.
    There is a regular weather phenomena in Europe called the Fahn, which translates, we’re told, to “hair dryer” and is a warm breeze that comes out of Africa and caresses the Alps. Whatever the origin of the air, it was warm and rolled over Alta Badia between inspection and the beginning of the first run of giant slalom. What had been a rock-hard surface decayed to a point it couldn’t be injected. U.S. coach Mike Morin said it was “gooey, buttery, hard snow.” With the possible exception of Finn Kalle Palander, the conditions bothered everybody.
    Palander, however, was superb, perhaps a tribute to his technical abilities; certainly a tribute to his surgeon. Miller said his skis had been fast — very fast — for two weeks. “A million times better,” he said, than early this season. And he put down two solid runs. But Palander had been more than a second and a half up after the first run. “I had no mistakes, no bobbles,” Miller said. But Palander was faster.
    This is not common for Bode Miller. He was relatively pleased with second considering.
    Ted Ligety continued a string of single-digit placings in seventh in the GS. He, Miller, Rahlves, Felix McGrath and Eva Twardokens are the only U.S. skiers to record single-digit results at Alta Badia. Ligety placed second in slalom on the hill the next day, making him second only to Miller for U.S. results at Alta Badia.
    The conditions hadn’t improved significantly for the slalom. The surface was, in racer terms, “grippy,” but at least it didn’t change last minute. Sweden now has two different male slalom winners in three races as Markus Larsson added his name to that of Andre Myhrer, the Beaver Creek winner. The Swedes had six guys in the points. Something right is going on in that program.
    From the U.S. point of view, it was Ligety in second with Miller failing to finish. The top seven finishers were each from different countries and none of those countries was Austria. Austrian men, in fact, haven’t won a race in the last 11 and that seems to be applying some pressure. Five went out in the first run and defending Cup champion Benjamin Raich DQ’ed in the second. This would be a good time to be a hungry young male racer in Austria. Changes will be made.
    They’ll have to catch up to Steven Nyman. His first win, he said, “Wasn’t that emotional, it wasn’t a ‘Gaaa feeling.’ It was relaxed. It wasn’t something drastic at all. It was an accomplishment that I expected.”
    Now that’s what we like to hear. And there’s plenty of racing left.