McKee's McThoughts: Weather gods are in China?

The Chinese figure they can stop the rains for the Olympics.
    Strikes me as ambitious.
    According to an article in the Los Angeles Times, by staff writer Barbara Demicki, they’re serious.
    Solid brass ambitious.
   There’s a team of Chinese meteorologists ready to “modify” the weather, hoping to limit the rainfall during the Olympic Games.
    Here’s a country with too many people on its hands.
    Should they be even remotely successful we have to wonder what that might mean for the future of ski racing.

THE CHINESE figure they can stop the rains for the Olympics.
    That strikes me as ambitious.
    According to an article in the Los Angeles Times, by staff writer Barbara Demicki, they’re serious.
    Solid brass ambitious.
    There’s a team of Chinese meteorologists ready to “modify” the weather, hoping to limit the rainfall during the Olympic Games.
    Talk about detail. Here’s a country with too many people on its hands.
    Should they be even remotely successful we have to wonder what that might mean for the future of ski racing. A major problem for our sport is the expense of televising it. It takes a lot of cameras for a downhill, which means a lot of production, which means a lot of highly trained people being paid well and housed and transported. That’s all well and good until a snowstorm, or rainstorm, or wind, or a fohn comes rolling through and cancels the whole shebang. Suddenly TV is out a lot of money, the sponsors are ticked off and Joe Coachpotato has his eyes assaulted by a Monster Truck Show from two years ago as the networks fill the void where a ski race had once been.
    Ugly.
    But if even a modicum of weather control could help make sure there is snow in the first place and sun during the scheduled race time, well now, that puts the odds a little more in the favor of the gambler.
    Not to mention what such a thing might mean for, oh say, growing food.
    I’ll watch the Summer Games with a little more interest now, and hope they show us some sky.

All-Name Team heroes
I have to brag a little about the All-Name Team. Did you catch the women’s slalom result from Ofterschwang: Veronika Zuzulova in fourth, Tanja Poutiainen fifth, Sarka Zahrobska seventh and Maria Pietilae-Holmner 11th. Marina Nigg was 17th. I think we out-pointed the Austrians. My only regret is that I hadn’t yet gotten around to naming Fanny Chmelar to the squad. We’ll rectify that right now and add her 18th to the point take. Way to go, team.

Bode quiets his critics
We’re not hearing the Bode Miller naysayers much these days. What I particularly like about this approach of his and Team America is the blue-collar attitude. This seems very workmanlike. He’s been working hard to get his slalom back around, and it is beginning to pay off, particularly with the combined results.
    Equipment has been the biggest hurdle to his slalom game. Coach John McBride tells us Miller’s slalom skis have been getting stiffer and stiffer, which makes them harder and harder to control. But he has been methodical in his approach and seems to getting smarter as well. At 30 our boy has matured into a full-blooded competitor. He says he doesn’t like to win if it means not skiing to the best of his ability, so maybe he has just gained a grasp of where his slalom abilities are these days. That only took three or four years. It was interesting, I thought, that he won the final training run for the Val d’Isere downhill while most of the guys went to train slalom. With every win he is leapfrogging some mighty big names on the all-time win list.

Women get back to speed racing
And the women have now gotten through a length stretch of slaloms and GS’s and gotten back to a more regular pattern of scheduling. There are five downhills left on the women’s schedule including this weekend, which certainly puts some padding on the side of Lindsey Vonn’s ledger. I’m going to call the “no-hitter” clause and not talk about what this could mean in terms of who wins the big globes this March. These are good days to be a fan of the U.S. Ski Team in particular and World Cup ski racing in general. A golden age is unfolding before our very electrons.

Fantastic stretch run shaping up
There has already been some fantastic ski racing this season. Kudos go to the Swiss, the Italians, the Canadians and the French for putting at least a dent in the Austrian point bag. Didier Cuche has been simply amazing. Denise Karbon is perhaps the best feel-good story in years. And not enough can be said about what Jean-Baptiste Grange is doing for slalom these days.
    The Canadians have three women in the top 10 of the downhill standings. There have been seasons when one would have been worth headlines.
    So the stretch run begins with all sorts of good potential nibbling the bait. And some big brass ones. Bring it home gang.