As inspection of the Birds of Prey downhill course got underway today (Dec. 2) in Beaver Creek, Colo., racers and coaches of the World Cup found the course more technical and “turny” compared to a year ago.

“The course is turnier this year,” said U.S. alpine men’s head coach Sasha Rearick.  “That’s a general trend right now in the World Cup. The downhills are becoming a little turnier.”

According to Rearick, the new approach to downhill course setting hasn’t hurt the flow or excitement of the courses and the design has improved over the last few years.“Yes, they are turnier but the courses seem to be flowing well,” he said. “A couple years ago when they stared making the courses turnier it was blocky. I think that’s what’s nice about this course here in Beaver Creek, it is turnier but, for the most part, it’s going to flow. You never know until you actually run it, but from looking at it, it looks like it’s going to flow pretty good.”

Rearick says the trend has been brought on by several factors.  “They’re just trying to slow the speeds down a little bit because with the equipment and also the level of skiing that’s been going on the guys are going faster, so they are just trying to control the speed to some degree, but I think it’s going to flow well.”

The trend of making speed courses more technical has been unpopular with some World Cup veterans. American Bode Miller wanted more speed during training at the season’s speed opener in Lake Louise a week ago. "I didn’t go very fast. They keep making the courses turnier and turnier and the speeds are just way down everywhere,” said Miller. “Now everything is so technical it’s like a Super G … the last 25 seconds and the first 15 seconds are the only parts that feel like a downhill the rest is pretty much hard turning the whole way, solid edge to edge the whole way down.”

Rearick says the more technical courses can play to most of the U.S skiers’ advantage. “Guys like Weibrecht, it suits him really well, [Eric] Fisher can turn the boards when he skis over the front of the boots and keeps his chest down and goes deep in the turn he can ski those. Marco Sullivan has made a lot of progress. He spent the whole summer working on his transition, going deeper in the turn, skiing on injected courses so that he could handle that. As we saw in Lake Louise in the steeper, turnier parts of the course he did really well,” said Rearick.

Turnier or no the Americans are feeling good about being back on their home turf, on a hill that has seen 15 U.S skiers on the podium since 2002. “The conditions are awesome, the surface underneath this fresh stuff is fantastic,” said Rearick. “Unfortunately it’s snowing right now but it’s light so it’s going to be able to brush off.”

There will be another downhill training run tomorrow and Friday before Saturday’s competition (Dec. 5).  -Eric Williams