As a warm-up for the Beijing Olympics, it does not get any tougher: the men’s World Cup downhill in Kitzbuehel, the most prestigious course on the circuit, but also widely regarded as the most testing.
Just weeks out from the Feb. 4-20 Winter Games, skiers will take to the thigh-trembling 3.3km-long Streif course on the Hahnenkamm mountain in the knowledge that nothing can be held back on a piste where the vertiginous start sees them reach 100kph in the first five seconds.
The 82nd running of the downhill, which made its debut in 1931, would see racers reaching motorway-coasting speeds of 140kph while negotiating sections that have an 85 percent gradient, meaning any thoughts about potential gold in Beijing are temporarily put on the back burner.
Photo: Reuters
The course falls, snakes and rolls, sending competitors barreling through a wide variety of terrain, in parts propelling them in the air, only for them to quickly re-align for icy traverses that severely test technical ability and mastery of well-honed equipment.
“This slope is so difficult, I always had to dig deep to get the best out of myself,” said retired Swiss racer Didier Cuche, who holds the record of five downhill wins on the mountain named after a rooster’s comb.
“I always had my back against the wall and needed to get everything right at the right moment,” he said.
Then into play comes the so-called “risk management”: how much a racer is able to push himself, much like a Formula One driver, in the knowledge that one slight error might mean hurtling into some of the 15km of nets and fencing down the course.
“On the Streif, the fine tuning has to be somewhere between 90 and 100 percent and adjusted to your own ability and what the hill allows,” argues Cuche.
“You can then move within this percentage range without exceeding the risk limit because as soon as you make a mistake, the race is over, or you fall — and that hurts,” he said.
There have been some gruesome crashes over the years. Sliding bodies, flailing skis and helicopter evacuations have become a regular feature and quickly silence the crowd.
COVID-19 restrictions mean a maximum of 1,000 spectators this year, a far cry from the 90,000 Kitzbuehel normally welcomes, a heady mix between champagne-drinking glitterati and young locals reveling in an alcohol-fueled rite of passage.
Their absence from the unashamedly voyeuristic spectacle would deprive all racers of the gladiatorial baying, the meek silence after a crash and the subsequent raucous applause should the crash victim be able to refind their footing.
“May this sports festival be held in an orderly and safe manner and distract us a little from everyday worries after spending almost two years in the clutches of the pandemic,” race committee chairman Michael Huber said.
After downhill training runs on Wednesday and yesterday, skiers are today to compete in a first downhill, before taking on a slalom tomorrow — when heavy snow is forecast, and a second downhill on Sunday.
“Kitzbuehel is the highlight of the year for us downhill skiers,” Austrian Vincent Kriechmayr, who won in Wengen last week, told ORF television.
“This is simply the most difficult descent of the whole year. The Streif is also a legendary route in other respects. You can’t leave anything to chance. You have to be in top shape there,” he said.
“I don’t know what’s in store for me at the Olympic Games, but Kitzbuehel is the downhill run that you want to win as an Austrian,” he added.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier