Do Bode’s training run results even matter?

Bode Miller in Sochi (GEPA)

After Bode Miller laid down two of the fastest three training runs on the Olympic track at Rosa Khutor, many have eyed him as a favorite for downhill gold in Sunday’s race. But skeptics continue to point out that training runs in alpine ski racing rarely predict success on race day.

It is certainly true that downhill training runs don’t dictate medals, and on the World Cup stage—at least—the correlation between training finish and race result can be extremely misleading. But on close examination of recent Olympic history, the training results might carry a bit more weight here. Much of that could be due to the fact that several countries with strong teams use the training runs to determine who will be among their starters come race day.

In the Vancouver Games of 2010, the men’s downhill training at Whistler was all but washed out, but the final women’s training had Lindsey Vonn as fastest, Julia Mancuso second, and Elisabeth Goergl third which was exactly as they finished in the medal event.

In 2006 at Sestriere in the Torino Olympics, the three men’s medal winners all made appearances among the top three of at least one of the training runs. Gold medal winner Antoine Deneriaz was fastest in the final training run, silver medalist Michael Walchhofer was second in the opening training run, and bronze medal winner Bruno Kernen was third in the second trainer. Similarly, gold medalist Michaela Dorfmeister was fastest in the first training run while silver medalist Martina Schild was fastest in the second training. Bronze medal winner Anja Paerson was second in the final trainer in Italy.

With two training runs at Snowbasin ahead of the Salt Lake City Games of 2002, gold medal winner Fritz Strobl was second fastest in both, Lasse Kjus the silver medal winner was third in the opening training run and Stefan Eberharter, the bronze medal winner, was first in the opener and third in the final. Among women, just bronze medalist Renate Goetchl made a podium placing in training as third fastest in the final test.

There have certainly been skiers over the past 12 years who made the top three of a training run and never came close to a medal, but discarding the training results from Sochi without considering the very real possibility these skiers will be in medal contention on race day would seem to most a bit foolish.

Considering recent history, it would come as little surprise for three men from this list of the top performers over the training runs to ultimately stand on the Olympic downhill podium tomorrow: Bode Miller, Matthias Mayer, Carlo Janka, Aksel Lund Svindal, Patrick Kueng, and Peter Fill.