It may be proclaimed as the blue riband event of alpine skiing, but a series of gruesome crashes in the women’s training has highlighted the inherent dangers of the downhill.
Dressed only in a figure-hugging catsuits and helmets the skiing speed kings and queens hurtle down long, steep and icy slopes at speeds that could see you cautioned on any of the world’s motorways.
The margin of error when you are travelling at a speed of 125kph is small when you’re in a car. It is even smaller for a skier who puts his trust into his physical form and technical proficiency on the two skis strapped to his feet.
Both the women’s and men’s downhill events at the Turin Games have featured long courses on wind-swept mountain sides with some spectacular jumps.
That makes for great viewing for the armchair spectator, but also drives home the fact that even a regular one-week-a-year skier would struggle massively on such a course.
”It’s like skiing on a marble floor,” one Agence France-Presse photographer, an advanced skier, said of the men’s 3 299m-long downhill course, after negotiating part of the piste to set up his cameras at a prime jump.
”There’s nothing to turn into, it’s just very steep and very, very icy.”
Course organisers here have even moved to make the women’s downhill run more difficult after criticism from reigning World Cup downhill champion Michaela Dorfmeister of Austria that it was too easy after a World Cup Super-G was held on it last year.
The world’s longest ladies’ run, coming in at 3 202m, is now ”a little different from last time. It’s bumpier,” the 32-year-old veteran admitted after the first training run on Sunday.
Since that World Cup event, organisers have constructed several new jumps, installed steeper, sharper banked curves which will test the skiers’ ability to cope with the very icy conditions at the top of the mountain.
”It’s one of the longest courses we have and it’s higher at the start. Harder on the legs,” said Dorfmeister.
It is a moot point whether defending Olympic downhill champion Carole Montillet and fellow medal contenders Lindsey Kildow of America and Canada’s Allison Forsyth would agree with Dorfmeister’s criticism of the original run after they suffered heavy falls on the rejigged course on Monday.
Most of the other contenders for the downhill escaped any unwanted mishaps.
Despite most agreeing there was little change in conditions from Sunday, when the first training run was held, they also advised caution on a run which they say is very bumpy.
Libby Ludlow, a teammate of Kildow, said: ”There are just lots of rolls. There is never a dull moment, which makes it more challenging.”
Sweden’s Anja Paerson, who along with Croatia’s Janica Kostelic is hoping to win a handful of gold medals in the women’s events, said she had been apprehensive about the San Sicario Fraiteve run.
”If you miss the line a little bit you don’t have time to adapt. I was really nervous about the course,” said Paerson, who won World Cup downhill and super-G races here last year. ”It is very difficult.”
But Paerson admitted that the modifications made to the course made for an exciting run.
”The course looks nice and I was skiing well. It’s more difficult and there’s more terrain to remember.
”The course is pretty challenging, bumpy in some places. The jumps are huge — huge! — but there are good landings.” – AFP