Big guys may have the edge at classic Val Gardena

The Val Gardena speed races are scheduled for this Friday and Saturday in Italy, the first true classic on the men’s World Cup calendar this season – the previous week’s classic at Val d’Isere, France, having been canceled because of poor snowcover.
    After Saturday’s downhill, the men go over the pass to Alta Badia for Sunday’s giant slalom, and then up to Hinterstoder, Austria, for tech races on Wednesday and Thursday. That’s six races in the next week for all-rounders.
    It snowed last week on the upper part of the Val Gardena course, and temperatures dropped low enough for organizers to blow snow on the speedy, rolly bottom section after that, according to Gernot Mussner, a representative of the race committee, reached by phone earlier this week.
THE VAL GARDENA speed races are scheduled for this Friday and Saturday in Italy, the first true classic on the men’s World Cup calendar this season – the previous week’s classic at Val d’Isere, France, having been canceled because of poor snowcover.
    After Saturday’s downhill, the men go over the pass to Alta Badia for Sunday’s giant slalom, and then up to Hinterstoder, Austria, for tech races on Wednesday and Thursday. That’s six races in the next week for all-rounders.
    It snowed last week on the upper part of the Val Gardena course, and temperatures dropped low enough for organizers to blow snow on the speedy, rolly bottom section after that, according to Gernot Mussner, a representative of the race committee, reached by phone earlier this week.
    Didier Cuche of Switzerland, who is bouncing back in a major way from his knee injury two years ago, has won both of the two training runs on the Saslong course, which is famous for its deep shade, rolling terrain and the massive Camel Jumps — some of the biggest air downhillers get on the whole circuit.
    Olympic champion Antoine Deneriaz of France, off to a slow start this season, could break through the funk here. He won the downhill here in 2002 and 2003, before Max Rauffer of Germany won on a windy day in 2004 and Marco Buechel of Liechtenstein won on a shortened course last year.
    These are all big guys; the biggest, Austrian downhill master Michael Walchhofer, has been runner-up in the downhill here four times. The Austrian men have not dominated the podium so far this season.
    Erik Guay of Canada is another good bet for anyone’s World Cup fantasy league team. He was on the podium here in both races last year, and he needs to do something to this mountain to avenge his little brother Stefan, who blew his knee out in the first training run just days after winning back-to-back NorAms in Canada.
    Kristian Ghedina of Italy will not race, despite a late bid to come back for just this race, which he has won four times, a record he shares with Franz Klammer of Austria. No man has won five times.
 
Schroecksnadel’s forecast for next week
    While the men are racing on the Saslong course, where limestone monoliths create sudden and confusing shade patterns, the women will be racing in Reiteralm, Austria.
    After this weekend, the women will move over to Val d’Isere for three makeup races there, and the men will go back to Austria for tech races at Hinterstoder, a low-profile resort owned by Austrian ski federation boss Peter Schroecksnadel.
    “I checked it about three hours ago, and there was 15 meters on the side of the course and they are working on this now,” said Schroecksnadel, reached by phone Wednesday. “It’s very hard, very icy, with 30 centimeters of packed snow.”
    To minimize the appearance of conflict-of-interest, Schroecksnadel said, he does not make money off the racing at Hinterstoder.
    Schroecksnadel said he was happy that the World Cup calendar was regularizing itself after poor snowcover led to cancellations and rescheduling. He doesn’t like long race series, believing that the public loses interest, and said that this was the reason he was happy that Beaver Creek did not end up adopting canceled European races and attaching them to the four-race series there last week.
    “We will have these two races, that’s it,” he said of the Hinterstoder event. “I only want to have two races. That’s what we want. We don’t want to have four races in a row. It’s not good for the sport.”
 
Cuche is killing it
    Didier Cuche is on fire this season, scoring top-10 results in each of the races he has finished. He also has delivered the best one-liner of the World Cup so far, uttered in English at a press conference after the Beaver Creek downhill, where he finished right between Americans Bode Miller and Steve Nyman on the podium.
    “It’s nice to be a piece of ham,” said Cuche, who is from Neuchatel in the French-speaking western part of Switzerland. “I would like to be, the whole season, a piece of ham between the U.S. boys, not Austrians.”
    The day after that memorable quote, Ski Racing caught up with the short and pugnacious French-speaking downhiller and asked about his comeback.
    “The knee is really good,” said Cuche, who raced last year with a sour outlook that was a result of extreme pain and low morale. “Sometimes I feel pain, but not all the time. This success shows that I can take some risk now. I respect the mountain but don’t fear it.”
    He said he was pleased to see Buechel of Liechtenstein — for all intents and purposes, a member of the Swiss team — win the season-opening downhill at Lake Louise.
    “It’s nice, it makes hope for me,” said Cuche, speaking to his own desire to win at 34 (Buechel was the oldest WC race winner ever at 35 years, 20 days).
    Because he took the fastest time in Thursday’s training run, Cuche will race 30th in Saturday’s downhill. He has won only two World Cup downhills in his long career, Kitzbühel in 1998 and Garmisch in 2004.