Beaver Creek: Walchhofer tops, Lanning shines in difficult Birds of Prey training session

By Published On: November 29th, 2006Comments Off on Beaver Creek: Walchhofer tops, Lanning shines in difficult Birds of Prey training session

Michael Walchhofer, the World Cup downhill champion the past two seasons, claimed the only training run for the Birds of Prey downhill at Beaver Creek on Wednesday, fighting through falling snow to edge Austrian teammate Christoph Gruber by .18 seconds.
    With 94 racers on the start list and the 45 best-ranked skiers down the hill, Walchhofer is expected to hold the lead after finishing in 1 minute, 46.36 seconds.
    American T.J. Lanning, coming off years of tough injuries, was brilliant, skiing into ninth, 1.21 back, after starting 83rd. “I’m skiing smarter and having fun,” Lanning said after completing his first run ever — race or training — down the full length of Birds of Prey. “I’m was finally healthy enough to get a lot of mileage over the summer training downhill. Now I have a downhill spot and I’m psyched for tomorrow especially.”

BEAVER CREEK, Colorado — Michael Walchhofer, the World Cup downhill champion the past two seasons, claimed the only training run for the Birds of Prey downhill at Beaver Creek on Wednesday, fighting through falling snow to finish in 1 minute, 46.36 seconds, edging Austrian teammate Christoph Gruber by .18 seconds.
    American T.J. Lanning, coming off years of tough injuries, was brilliant, skiing into ninth, 1.21 back, after starting 83rd. “I’m skiing smarter and having fun,” Lanning said after completing his first run ever — race or training — down the full length of Birds of Prey. “I’m was finally healthy enough to get a lot of mileage over the summer training downhill. Now I have a downhill spot and I’m psyched for tomorrow especially.”
    Both Walchhofer and Gruber have finished second, but never first, on the Birds of Prey course. Third-place finisher Didier Cuche of Switzerland, a quarter of a second back, won here in December 2002.
    “It was a very important day for me because I was fast also in Lake Louise but not on the result list,” Walchhofer said. “And so it’s important to show the other guys who is the chief.”
    “The most difficult part is always the steep terrain. It’s so steep and some turns are very fast and bumpy. The light also wasn’t so good today, but good enough for the first run.”
    Steven Nyman, with new headgear sponsor Ski Salt Lake, skied into 15th place, a second and a half off Walchhofer’s time. Lake Louise super G winner John Kucera led the Canadians in 17th, with Erik Guay 20th as Manuel Osborne-Paradis skied off course after getting caught up in soft snow lining the course.
    Kevin Francis skied from 74th to take 21st, Bode Miller sat 26th, Marco Sullivan 28th, Justin Johnson 44th, Erik Fisher 45th, Christopher Beckmann 64th, Ted Ligety 68th, Andrew Weibrecht 69th, Scott Macartney 84th and Jimmy Cochran 86th. Bryon Friedman, still rusty coming off injury, was a DNF. Miller nearly lunged forward over the tips of his skis and lost control, but rebounded to finish strongly despite standing up just before the finish line.
    For more on the Americans, click here.
    Race officials reported the ski area had received 18 inches of snow in the past two days, but noted that blowing wind packed up snow 3 feet deep in some portions of the course, forcing workers to scrape it off.
    Liechtenstein’s Marco Buechel, fifth in training after winning last weekend’s Lake Louise downhill, told Ski Racing that the Birds of Prey course was bumpier, less buffed out than in typical years here. A Ski Racing test drive of the hill confirmed that the terrain was rougher than in previous years, with a diverse track that was bare to the pre-storm surface in some spots and filled with heavier snowpack in other spots.
    “Today it was very difficult, visibility was very, very bad,” Austrian Hermann Maier, eighth in training, said. “I was satisfied with my run, but it’s very, very slow.”
    “It was very difficult, because I couldn’t see anything after the first section, I had some problems with my goggles,” teammate Fritz Strobl said after finishing 29th through 45 competitors.
    Maier, who has a four career podiums (three wins, one second) in the Birds of Prey downhill, said the key to winning Friday’s race is, “Find a good line, find a good rhythm, and try to ski cleanly on my line, that should be good.”
    Strobl said, “It will be very difficult because we have a bad start number, we are back in the 20s. But I think the weather will get better and we’ll be able to see.
    “It’s important to be fast in the flat parts also, and you have to ski very well in the steep parts. It’s important to be fast from the middle to the finish.”
    But Canadian Erik Guay, 17th, said, “The course looks great, better than all the other years. They’ve injected it in some places and it’s nice and hard and aggressive snow. I was coming off the flats and my goggles just started spider webbing, I got this fog through everywhere. I came down, toward the island there, and I couldn’t see anything, just trying to search for it.”
    American Macartney was optimistic despite his struggles Wednesday. “I really like this course, I've spent a lot of time on it and am pretty comfortable for the race,” Macartney said. “My training ruin wasn’t very good. I had some visibility problems, just kind of unlucky with that. But I think by race day I’ll be fired up and ready to go.”  
    Now-retired Daron Rahlves, the most decorated U.S. speed-event skier, won the last edition of this downhill in 2005 as well as in 2003. Miller snatched the victory in 2004.
    The last Austrian to win the Birds of Prey downhill was Maier in 2003, when it featured a second race after poor conditions at the French resort of Val d’Isere.
    With the program including a super combi — a race which adds the times from a downhill and a single slalom run — more traffic will cut up the course, leading to ruts. There were 95 racers entered in Wednesday’s downhill training, which normally handles only 50-60 racers.
    The increase in numbers is because both technical and speed racers will be running the downhill, the speedsters as a true event, the gate specialists as practice for the super combi.
    The super combi is scheduled for Thursday, the downhill on Friday. The men will also run a giant slalom on Saturday and a slalom on Sunday.
    Beaver Creek could pick up a number of races that were orphaned after two World Cup events in Europe were canceled.
    Men’s races in Val d’Isere and women’s events St. Moritz, Switzerland, originally slated for Dec. 9-10, had insufficient snow and warm weather prevented proper snowmaking. 
    Click here to catch up with Finlay Mickel, a British racer looking to notch his first top-30 finish at BOP.
— Ski Racing's Sam Flickinger, Hank McKee, Nathaniel Vinton and Don Cameron contributed to this report
 

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