World Cup Rewind: Winds of change howl in January

The winds came in from Africa. As if Adelboden didn’t present enough of a challenge all on its own.
    The World Cup is won, and/or lost, in January. January includes nothing but classic big-league races at big-league venues and they come at the competitor with a haste one cannot quite understand unless they have faced it down. The January World Cup schedule starts with Adelboden, Switzerland’s Kuonisbärgli course, a tricky, tough GS and now slalom hill. January also started with the dreaded Föhn, winds that sweep over the great Sahara before they reach the European Alps. It can change a well-prepared course in minutes.
THE WINDS CAME in from Africa. As if Adelboden didn’t present enough of a challenge all on its own.
    The World Cup is won, and/or lost, in January. January includes nothing but classic big-league races at big-league venues and they come at the competitor with a haste one cannot quite understand unless they have faced it down. The January World Cup schedule starts with Adelboden, Switzerland’s Kuonisbärgli course, a tricky, tough GS and now slalom hill. January also started with the dreaded Föhn, winds that sweep over the great Sahara before they reach the European Alps. It can change a well-prepared course in minutes.
    Adelboden enjoys a well-earned reputation as a nasty competition hill. It can accentuate more aspects of GS technique than any course in existence. Throw in changing conditions and it calls for abilities only the very best racers can hope to conquer. Nearly a third of the time the winner of the Adelboden GS has also won the World Cup overall title. It is a critical race and the Swiss celebrate that. 23,000 spectators and several thousand cowbells were in place.
    After the first run Austrian Stephan Goergl, a 30-year-old Austrian with nothing but two wins from 2005 in his bag of trophies, held a solid four-tenths-of-a-second lead. The flag-waving Swiss were hopeful with the likable veteran Didier Cuche in second, the star of Beaver Creek Daniel Albrecht in third, Marc Berthod fourth and Didier Defago sixth all within eight tenths. To heighten the anticipation, no one else who had won a previous GS this season remained in the top 10. GS standings leader Ted Ligety booted out eight gates in and slid to a stop with a scraped-up face but otherwise none the worse for wear. Twenty-three of the best ski racers in the world had failed to complete even one run. This was a race — an important, prestigious race — up for grabs and the home field Swiss had the leader surrounded.
    Celebrating the race is one thing, celebrating victory quite another.
    There was more than a bit of frenzy in the neighborhood for the second run. The Austrians displayed the usual proficiency moving up en masse. Hannes Reichelt, Christoph Gruber and Rainer Schoenfelder all held podium positions before the frenzy hit the fever pitch and the Swiss moved to center stage.
    “It was a big advantage to have this crowd at the finish,” Berthod said. “I can tell you, my legs were burning and tired and they warmed me at the end.” Adelboden is a mandatory stamp in a GS racer’s passport, and for Berthod it is a stamp he relishes.
    “There is a special relationship with this slope here and myself,” he said. “It is a special place for me and I am confident coming here. Winning the GS here has always been a dream for me.”
    Berthod claimed the win, his second career win and second at Adelboden, having won the slalom last season. Albrecht claimed second. And all was right in Heidi-land.
    Benjamin Raich skied safely to seventh and preserved his hold on the overall standings lead. Canadian Jean-Philippe Roy had one of his better races ever to finish ninth and there were big pushes from the back of the pack, though few did their point profiles any good with Berthod’s half-second margin. Jimmy Cochran was the lone U.S. finisher in 17th, though he did finish ahead of first-run leader Goergl.
    Slalom is relatively new at Adelboden. While the GS dates back to the very beginnings of the World Cup and further, this season’s slalom was just the sixth the site has hosted for World Cup. The Swiss men have just four slalom victories since 1991 so the hopes of the red-flag horde weren’t high. That was good, because no Swiss racer made it to the second run.
    Overnight rains did not make things any easier. Spots of the course were slick. The light varied from poor to worse. The steep sections make it difficult to stay ahead of the course and the flats make it nearly impossible to make up from a mistake.
    Austrian Mario Matt is an eight-year World Cup veteran who won the second race he scored in … at Kitzbühel, no less. He knows how to take risk, and he knows the wrong side of the ledger as well. A crash at Kitzbühel in 2002 fractured his shoulder and he has suffered with a bad back for a long time. He pushed that aside and charged at the first run of the Adelboden slalom emerging with a hens-tooth slim lead over Ivica Kostelic. Ligety tied Swede Markus Larsson for third, less than three tenths behind. In order, Schoenfelder, Moelgg, Japan’s Akira Sasaki and Raich were all within a half second of Matt’s leading pace. The setup for the final run was incredible and all of the leaders earned their positions.
    “That was some of the best skiing I’ve seen from [Ligety] since 2006,” said teammate and training partner Jimmy Cochran, who placed 11th in the first run himself. “He looked like his old self today.”
    In form, maybe, but his face looked like — and Ligety said he felt like — he’d been in a bar fight from his GS crash.
The slalom’s first run turned out to be no less formidable than the GS with 34 skiers being eliminated. Still, to win means throwing safety to the wind. Winning slalom is all about calculated risk.
    “It’s all about rolling the dice and taking risks and not just settling for a solid run,” said Cochran. “That’s the name of the game. It’s really easy after a decent first run to say ‘OK, I’m just going to ski solid and finish and score some points’, and the guys who win don’t do that. They say, ‘screw it, I want to win, I’m going to risk it all, all or nothing’. That’s what it takes to win a slalom these days. Well, that, and maybe a little luck.”
    Cochran pulled out his stops and survived his second run with some athleticism. He was second at the time he ran, later dropping back to finish eighth.
    German Felix Neureuther creamed the second run, putting up the fastest time but had just too much first run deficit to win. “I know I can do better than this,” he said. “I hope I can keep my form."
    Raich, skiing just after Neureuther, also put in a fast second run to edge by the German. Sasaki had a dreadful run. Moelgg and Schoenfelder couldn’t quite catch the two leaders and Larsson dropped well down the finish order. Ligety, with a win on his mind and regained slalom prowess obvious to those who saw his first run, charged hard. He didn’t last long, straddling a gate high on course.  “Slalom is a game of millimeters,” he said. “And whether you’re a millimeter one way or the other way is the difference of whether you straddle a gate or not.”
    But he wasn’t down on his performance on the Ad
elboden weekend. “Right now I’m skiing the best slalom of my life, and I had an awesome first run and was counting on having an equally good second run. But that’s slalom.”
    That left Kostelic — who finished behind Moelgg in sixth — and Matt, who knew the importance of winning early in January.
    “I’ve been fast in training since the beginning of the season but I haven’t been very lucky up until now,” Matt told the AFP. “It’s the month for the classics and for me this is generally a good month. It’s good to start with a win.”
    Matt didn’t have the fastest second run, but it was enough to edge Raich by a tenth for his first win of the season. It could not have come at a better time.

    — Jack Shaw contributed to this story