McKEE'S McTHOUGHTS: Ski racing has changed much since Stenmark reigned

McKEE’S McTHOUGHTS: Ski racing has changed much since Stenmark reigned{mosimage}Hank McKee is a longtime staff member and contributing editor for Ski Racing magazine, and is considered the authoritative statistical resource for alpine planet on the planet.

Wednesday, Feb. 22-Friday, Feb. 24
I’m trying to read notes scrawled on a napkin at the only pizzeria open after midnight … The napkin got torn so a piece of it could be used for its intended purpose, and the scrawl wasn’t all that legible in the first place, so this is a challenging task. Without reading a word, however, it reminds of an interesting evening.

I was joined at my small table that evening by some journalist friends, so I stayed at the table – meal consumed and napkin long since stashed in a safe pocket – for some conversation. At the Olympics, it can be pretty hard for journalists to talk about something other than the Games. The ‘off-switch’ can be difficult for us to locate, and impossible to operate. So we discussed the fun stuff – the wild rumors, the not-so-wild rumors, the stuff that can’t really be substantiated and so will never see print or air time.

Ingemar Stenmark walked by.
Stenmark – for those who might have forgotten, never knew, or are too young to appreciate – still holds the World Cup victories record (among others). And he’s destined to hold it for quite some time longer, even though he raced in only two events (slalom and GS) in an era when the schedule was considerably shorter. No. 2 on the men’s win list is Hermann Maier with 53. Stenmark won 86. In 1979 alone he won 13 races.

I always enjoyed watching Ingemar race. He was so smooth a skier, with no wasted motion. It was almost unfair, he was so good. He made ski racing an art.

So just seeing him – walking through a pizzeria – tweaked my being; stalled my thought process. Hit my ‘off-button.’

Anja Paerson, like Stenmark from Sweden, had captured her first gold medal earlier in the day, and the back room of this restaurant was overflowing with various Swedish folks.

I’m pretty sure the King was not back there – He’s a big ski race fan, but rarely frequents pizzerias – but there were definitely some high-ranking team officials present and their mood was festive, in a reserved Swedish kind of way.
I found I really enjoyed seeing a smile on the face of a man so frequently called ‘taciturn’ by the press. Ingemar seems to be enjoying life more now.

It turned out I would have breakfast with Stenmark the next morning; in the same way I once had dinner with Ted Turner. We were in the same room. Sometimes, that’s enough.

The scrawl on the napkin was about relationships and the effect of distance.
Ski racing is hell on relationships. I asked my pizzeria tablemates what they thought the divorce rate might be among World Cup coaches. They both quickly responded ‘100 percent.’

I don’t think it’s that high, but I will bet it’s about as high as any occupation. The guys who care for the skis – the tech reps – face similar domestic situations.

Skiing starts defining people early. Youngsters miss school functions, miss the weekends. The better a skier gets, the longer the trips become, so by the time dating becomes desirable, the pool is reduced to other skiers. I suppose that’s good for developing good ski racing genes, but it seems so limiting.

For parents it can be just as bad, because until the time the racer is part of a major program, they’ll be shuttling them to events and training, and probably spending a considerable amount of time standing in the snow either gate tending or spectating … or schlepping skis and jackets.

The World Cup season is roughly 17 weeks long, with the bulk of it taking skiers, coaches, tech reps, officials – and yes, journalists – to countries not their own.

I’m 19 or so days into this Olympic adventure and happy to be here, but I miss my wife, my family, my friends, home. Some folks – certain zodiac signs I’m told – get along famously on the road. I enjoy exploring as much as anybody and heartly recommend it to anyone. For God’s sake, get out of the comfort zone and see what the world is all about. The world is getting smaller and it is important for us all to know all we can about our brothers and sisters around the globe.

In the 1800s, Napolean had cannon hauled to the peak of one of the mountains overlooking this valley, to protect the pass. In the 1800s it took a week to get from New York City to Vermont. On my way home, I’ll make that distance in half an hour. That’s 99.9 percent smaller.

We interrupt this program for this important news flash. Julia Mancuso has just won the women’s giant slalom. Gold medal. All thought process ends abruptly. The ‘off-button’ is punched at a point when the ‘On’ button needs on overdrive. We’re going to go do some other things now.

Distractions like that help life on the road. If you are concentrated all the time on doing your job, you don’t have time to miss the things you miss.

For a young man or woman – say at the age when their athletic abilities are at their peak – the World Cup tour, the season-long competition which only gets overshadowed every four years when an Olympics rolls around, can become commonplace. It offers a distorted view of our smaller world. Skiing becomes the hub of their lives. It’s what they spend their waking hours preparing for, traveling to or from, and for a few of hours a week, actually doing. And it can make them rock stars. Make them targets for autograph hounds, journalists and others who feed off their exploits.

Which brings us to Bode Miller. I’ve always felt he had the right approach. His goal – as I understand it, and may Bode please correct me if I’m wrong – his goal has been to influence his sport so much he changes the way it’s played.

He’s already accomplished that. Take the opportunity to watch the men’s slalom, the closing event of the XX Winter Olympic Games, and see if I’m not right. Slalom is not skied the same way it was when Bode first arrived. When Stenmark raced slalom, it was poetic, beautiful. This Olympic slalom will be full-out attack with a miniscule margin for error. It may look harsh. It may look sharp. It will be ‘on the edge’ of what is possible on skis. The line between success and failure will be so small the competitors themselves may not realize when they have crossed over.

Slalom, thanks in part to Miller, and even more to those other racers who refused to let him go alone into this new era, has become the macho discipline of ski racing, taking over from the faster bigger downhill.

That’s a big statement, as downhill has reigned since Sir Arnold Lunn first stuck poles in the snow and suggested skiing around them was sport.

This is a new century, and slalom is not the same sport it once was.

When it’s over, I’ll go home. Those who are redefining the sport will go to another country and search some more for where, exactly, that edge may be.

Monday, Feb. 21
It’s the racing, stupid.

The days of the week are not relevant here.

Today was men’s GS day, and that was very relevant.

The dawn promised and then delivered a perfect day for ski racing, not too cold and a sky that seemed filled with sun.

Capping that was Sise, a race hill of equal magnificence. Bill McCollom, a senior editor at Ski Racing, said the hill reminded him ‘of Waterville (Valley) on steroids.’ Just sitting there with its steep faces and rolling transitions, Sise breathed anticipation.

The first real crowd we’ve seen at Sestriere was antsy before the start, waving flags, playing trumpets, horns and other assorted noise makers. ‘All of the flags together’ said the public address announcer. Rolling his ‘R’s’ as his native Italian shaded his perfect English, he mentioned ‘San Mar-r-r-ino, number 82.’

But it was when the first forerunner came down the course we began to see the real beauty and true nature of the Sise. The course-setter, a Slovenia-bor
n coach of the Canadian team – Dusan Grasic by name – had set a worthy course, one which made use of the nuances of the hill, that made adventure an intricate part of the racer’s path. It was evident this course was going to provide a test of racing skills. The promise of the dawn paled to this.

There were plenty of stars in this race and no clear favorite. There had been five GS’s held on the World Cup season, and four different winners. A dozen men had made it to the top three places in a GS, and only four of them had made the top three twice. There was no question someone was going to deliver the goods and plenty of question of which skier it might be.

From the start house the racers looked right down into the village of Sestriere. Between them and the streets and shops were several thousand spectators, each group cheering in their own style, each group hopeful their hero could pull off this huge win on this challenging course. Most – if not all – fully aware this was not going to be an easy race to win.

It wasn’t.

Giant slalom always boasts the biggest field of the alpine races in the Olympics. The downhill and super G are just too dangerous and scary to invite the participation of the amateur sportsman. And the slalom has gotten too technical. The GS has, traditionally, been the race which offers the most hope of making it to the finish.

Ninty-one percent of all the alpine medals handed out before these Games started (and the percentage has only grown since) have gone to representatives of nine countries: Austria, Switzerland, France, Germany, Canada, Italy, Norway, Sweden, and the United States. The other 9 percent have gone to Slovenia/Yugoslavia, Spain, Liechtenstein, Croatia, Australia, Japan, Russia, Czechoslvakia and Luxembourg.

This course, it was apparent, was going to challenge the cream and turn the legs of the rest to rubber. The best seven GS racers in the world would ski the course first in random order, and the next best eight in a second wave. The race part of this event was going to start fast.

Boy, did it.

As graceful as these big-time skiers can be, and were, they faced 52 gates in the first run and another 54 later in the afternoon in the longest GS test of the season. It was a test of endurance, of strength, and for sure, skill. The Sise – this world-class hill on steroids – held its own against the best ski racers in the world.
In the end, the World Cup leader, Benjamin Raich, got the gold medal. A French veteran, Joel Chenal, skiing his heart out for coach Severino Bottero, who had perished in a car accident a month before the Games, won silver and the truly great Hermann Maier earned bronze. A young Canadian backwoodsman, Francois Bourque – the first-run winner and biggest surprise of the race – wound up fourth.
The top 20 finishers represented 12 countries, as one might expect. But a skiing background and a strong support program were not enough to do well on this hill in these Games. It also took experience, a lifetime of racing at a very high level. Of the top 16 finishers, only Bourque and Aksel Lund Svindal of Norway – tied for sixth – were under 24 years of age.

The fifth-place finisher, Fredrik Nyberg of Sweden, has successfully completed 197 World Cup races in his career dating back to 1988.

The course met the promise. Some of the crashes were spectacular. Some of the determination was laudable. Much of the skiing wasn’t pretty. Some of those wily veterans from strong programs will not want to be remembered for their runs on this Olympic course.

Thirty-five of the 82 skiers entered lost their battle with the Sise in the first heat. Two more admitted defeat and did not start the second run. Four more did not finish the second run. But 41 men – exactly half the field – did look out of that start house into the village, and twice sucked up their courage, strength and whatever skills they could muster to make it through both runs and earn a finish time.
It wasn’t just another ski race. But it was just ski racing. In life, I take any of these guys on my team. Thanks for the experience, guys.

Sunday, Feb. 19
In the United States, we don’t have many shutters. When and where we do, they are most often decorative in nature.

Here, in Sestriere, the 2006 Olympic village, they have real shutters. Big, honking shutters. Save yourself and your house kind of shutters. I can see why.

The weather changed here at the end of the first week of racing. The endless days of bright sunshine are gone, replaced yesterday by a frenzied little snowstorm that disrupted the morning, grayed the hair of those folks responsible for getting a race conducted, and then dispersed in the late afternoon. The sun came out, took a quick look for a few hours and then set. The races got held, and other than a stretched-out day, few were any the worse for wear.

But today dawned with the residents of the village looking down on the thick clouds that were rolling up the valley, and up into blustery snowfall. Such is life in the mountains in winter. Weather happens. The snow did not let up today. If anything, the storm has gotten a little stronger, the snow a little thicker, the wind a little more gusty.

Maybe I’m a strange man, but I love it. Mother Nature says ‘jump’ and those who try to defy her get trashed. Those who say, ‘sure babe, how high?’ can be in for a fine ride.

I grew up in western New York, and we from that region know about weather…

I’m distracted right now. I’ve set my laptop up in the corner of a lounge off the bar of the hotel. It’s a fine place to work in a relaxed atmosphere. A gentleman — an older guy with one of those European no-lapel jackets — walked in, sat down at the piano and played some licks of jazz which were magnificent. Then the bar manager brought him and his party a bottle of champagne they may have ordered and he stopped playing. Too bad for me, but not so bad as if he had not played at all, eh?

WE from western New York, we know about weather. We’ve lived it. And mountain climates can be exceptional. I have no doubt the weather during a Mount Everest climb is of more concern than a lake-effects storm, no matter how much it dumps on Arkwright. And the shutters help confirm my impression that the weather here in Sestriere can be particularly ugly at times.

So, today another race was canceled. Women’s super G, postponed until tomorrow, when it is — at present — scheduled between two runs of the men’s GS.

Now it might suddenly clear — because at this altitude with mountain ranges this severe, it’s possible. If I had to bet, right now I’d say ‘no way’ but it could also clear and away we go, which is going to be difficult for the journalists covering the races, because the women’s courses are quite a ways away up the valley — toward France — and around the corner in another valley.

But yesterday, the storm cleared and an old Norwegian, a guy who’s been racing at a world-class level for 15 years or more — Kjetil Andre Aamodt — won the men’s super G. This is really remarkable, because this guy — who might be young — at 34 — by many standards, but is old by ski racing standards — already held the record for the most Olympic medals, and also had the most gold medals in alpine racing.

He got himself a shovel and buried the record by winning the super G. He’s now got eight Olympic medals, earned in five separate Olympics. That’s three more than the next-best competitor, and that, my friends is history happening before my very eyes. And that’s why one should attend these events.

Later in the day, the women got in the second half of their combined event, and Janica Kostelic, a Croatian woman who has had 11 knee operations, battles a thyroid problem and — when she was a girl — actually spent weeks living in a cave with her family so she and her brother Ivica could train on the ski slopes — won the combined.

She, and the Norwegian gentleman, have each now won four gold medals, and that, too, is a record for a
ll time. I find it most interesting, both of them skipped an event, threw away a chance to get a medal in order to be better prepared in the events they did ski. Strategy at play.

I was also taken by the women’s combined slalom the evening previous. Young women, and some of then are very young — 16 — who smiled with relief and were so proud to be skiing in the Olympics at all as they finished their slalom runs. Some were three seconds out, and destined to be further back after the downhill leg, but they were clearly very glad to have finished the run at all.

And they showed it. They blew kisses to their friends, family and supporters in the grandstands. Many of them may never win another race, and may never come closer to the top of their sport again.

But this night, under the lights, with the cameras rolling, on the greatest sporting platform of all, they had taken their shot, skied their race and done the best they could do. And while most of them were ignored by the media, by — in fact — the world, for those two minutes, they were taking their place among the very best in the world at what they do, and what they have done for the bulk of their short lives.

If I could be listed among the top 30 in the world in any single category, I could be happy with that. Imagine being among the best 30 jazz piano players. I doubt the gentleman in the jacket who played across the room from me would put himself in that class. But on this night, he produced a reaction in my soul. And last night, more than two skiers did the same.

In Sestriere, the home and shop owners haven’t pulled the shutters closed yet. The windows are enough protection for now. It’s just a little snowstorm. The shutters are there for the blizzards, for when the big winds blow.

For me, the experiences of the 2006 Winter Olympics are beyond gale-force winds. Aamodt and Kostelic have provided history. They were the big wind. But there was also history made by Dagny Kristiandottir from Iceland, who finished the combined in 28th place, 53.17 seconds behind Kostelic. She now owns the best combined result — and the best downhill result of any Olympic Icelandic skier.

Some might call these decorative results, just window dressing. There is a place for that. And this is it.

Thursday, Feb. 16
It’s been a hectic couple of days.

Having young Ted Ligety get that gold medal in combined definitely lightened up the mood among the Americans who are here. But it also makes for a long day for the journalists.

There are 2,500 athletes at the Games … and 10,000 journalists. And those 10,000 people are just starting work when the 2,500 competitors are done with theirs.

So, while the coaches, officials, athletes and general hangers-on were celebrating this somewhat unexpected win, the journalists were hunched over keyboards with cell phones in their ears … or they were chasing rumors, at press conferences or whatever it is some of them do.

A fireworks display over the venue was meant to punctuate the night. It sort of fell below expectations. But what a great win. Hardcore ski racing fans know all about this guy. He’s one of the new breed of slalom skiers. This is his third season on the World Cup tour. And we know he’s fast, very fast, in slalom. The coaches have worked to tame him down — just a little bit — so he’ll finish races.

But at Schladming, a week or so before the Games started, he provided a glimpse how capable he might become.

The Schladming race, in Austria, is a ski fanatics’ dream. The hill is very steep and it drops right into the city of Schladming. They put up big lights and build a ‘stadium’ – they’re really overdeveloped bleachers – and this one World Cup event annually draws 40,000 people, in a midweek night event. It is a slalom showcase and the big guns understand the importance of winning there. Ligety understood that, too.

And he started first, the No. 1 guy out of the start house. Of course when the first guy finishes, nobody really knows just how good his time will be, doesn’t know how he will compare. But no one came close to Ligety’s time. He led the run by close to a full second when the TV cameras revealed one ski had not gone completely around a gate. Just like Bode’s run in the Olympic combined. It took them half the run to determine he had — in fact — missed a gate. Just like Miller’s run in the Olympic combined.

These two events demonstrate a level of ski competition that history has not known before. Instant replay has been used before in big events. It was used — I believe — in the 1972 Olympics for the first time. But it is becoming commonplace. The skiers are so fast and so close to the gates, sometimes they don’t know if they skied clean or not. ‘Gate-keepers’ the officials in charge of each gate, can’t tell with the naked eye if the skier got his skis around the poles.

At Schladming, Ligety, clearly the fastest skier, was disqualified by the big lenses of the cameras. At Sestriere, in the Olympic combined slalom, Miller — the leading skier if not the fastest — was disqualified. And that left Ligety as the one American with a real shot at a medal. He turned in a gold-medal performance in every sense of the term.

And then the journalists went to work. At the press conference — and this is hearsay because I didn’t get there — many of the questions reporters put to Ligety were about Bode Miller.

This young man has just won an Olympic gold medal … the fourth ever for an American male in alpine skiing; and the media hounds want to talk about another skier, a man who is out of the event.

Sure, Miller’s DQ was a mighty close call; just like Ligety’s had been at Schladming a couple of weeks ago.

I’ve got a dream — and it probably won’t come true. But I can definitely see the men’s slalom coming down to these two Americans. And I wouldn’t bet against Ligety.

But I fear what the media — the journalists — will want to talk about.