Will History Happen Again in Beaver Creek?

Tina Maze is on pace to match Lasse Kjus’s 1999 record medal haul.

The last time World Championships were held on American soil, in Vail/Beaver Creek in 1999, Norwegian Lasse Kjus impressed the fans, winning a medal in all five disciplines. No athlete — male or female — has matched that feat before or after. But this time around there is one athlete who may be able to match Kjus — Slovenia’s Tina Maze.

The parallels between the two coming into their respective World Championships are uncanny. Both were overshadowed by the bigger names of Hermann Maier and Lindsey Vonn. Both were quietly leading the overall standings with Kjus earning five wins, with all but one in downhill and Maze collecting three, in three different events. Both had been here before, coming through in the big events when the stakes were the highest. Kjus ended his career with 11 World Championships medals, a number that Maze, who already owns eight, could match by the end of this week.

Five-event skiers in this day and age are hard to find — at least one who can truly compete in all events. The schedule is demanding, making it hard to find the time to be perfect at one, much less five, events. Every moment spent in a downhill training run is time spent away from a slalom course. An athlete has to be able to adjust from the daring speed of a downhill run to the quick, agile turns in a slalom course.

But somehow Maze has been able to make it work, while her former five-event threats slowly wilted away: Maria Hoefl-Riesch retired; Lindsey Vonn’s injuries forced her to compete in speed only; Janica Kostelic’s knees forced retirement; and Anja Paerson retired. All the while Maze slowly kept improving and stayed healthy and strong, becoming the oldest female world champion in the downhill last Friday, Feb. 6.

“It always takes good skiing in each discipline; it’s the hardest part with these changes from one discipline to another,” said Maze after her super G silver medal. “To get the right timing to be fast in slalom to be smart in downhill, to not put too much pressure in the skis and to be smooth in super G, for me it was really challenging.”

Maze has already won a race in every discipline this season alone, except super G, which she came within three-hundredths of accomplishing during the opening event of these World Championships. She is one of only three women in the history of the sport to have won a race in all five events in a single season, when she accomplished that during her incredible 2013 season. She won 11 races and finished on the podium a record 24 times. Unlike other five-event skiers, Maze has improved with age. She won her first World Cup race in 2002 at age 19 during a giant slalom in Soelden, Austria, in a historical three-way tie. She was never a consistent threat on the tour until the late 2000s and did not win a race in an event other than GS until 2008. It took her until 2013 to complete her five-event supremacy.

Maze entered the World Championships as the only person who could realistically threat Kjus’s record medal haul, and so far she has not disappointed. Other athletes have come close in the past with the most recent being Paerson who did not finish the GS in the 2007 World Championships in Are, Sweden, after finishing on the podium in her other four events. The American media played up the idea of Bode Miller winning five medals in the Torino Olympics, but left empty-handed, and they did the same with Vonn heading into Vancouver. She went home with two.

But Maze knows what she is capable of and she also acknowledges the toll the schedule has taken on her. She admitted that she was not able to compete at 100 percent in the races leading up to World Championships because her body was beginning to feel run down, but she also knew that resting and taking it easy would maybe pay off for her in the long run. The long run wasn’t far ahead; it was focused on Vail/Beaver Creek and the most important races of the season, where she planned to bring out her best in all events.

“I know I can do this [win a medal in every event]; I knew before I came here so of course it’s in my mind, but thinking about that makes no sense,” said Maze following her second medal and first gold in the downhill on Friday. “I just have to go day by day, turn by turn and discipline to discipline. The timing is important that I get it and then I can for sure be a contender for each event so hopefully I can do that.”

After two events Maze has matched Kjus with a gold and a silver in the downhill and super G. Kjus was known more for his speed prowess, and never won a World Cup slalom in his career. His silver medal in the slalom in the final event of the 1999 World Championships was probably the biggest surprise of his five medals. He only finished on a World Cup podium in slalom once in his entire career.

In contrast, Maze made it through the events that are arguably her weakest with two medals and now will have three more to possibly add to the medal count. She joked that ahead of the Championships she would be content with two medals and then could relax. Now that the medals have come so quickly, she has changed her tune.

“I was thinking if I do downhill and super G well, then I should go home and just get ready for Maribor,” Maze said in an interview with Amanda Ruggeri of Deadspin.com. “But that’s just not me. I just think I have a chance to win some more medals here. So I’ll just stay here.”

The alpine combined scheduled for today, Feb. 9, should give Maze her best chance at another gold. On the World Cup tour this season, she has already won a downhill and slalom, the two events that the combined is comprised of, and she is the only woman competing who has come close to that feat this season. But, as always, she will still have competition, and it is a sport where nothing is guaranteed — except that we’ll all be watching.