The alpine World Cup schedule gets back on track this weekend and has a clear shot to the end of the season – no Olympics, no World Championships, no speed bumps…just racing each week from now until the y’all come World Cup Finals March 12-16 in Bormio, Italy.
World Cup Finals will be a pintsize Olympics. Alpine, cross-country, freestyle and snowboarding will be in and around Bormio, putting a cork in their World Cup season. Jumping and Nordic combined will be elsewhere but Bormio will be rockin’ during that third weekend of March with everyone else.
But, first, after the holiday hiccup – one men’s race between Dec. 17 and this weekend – the new year for alpine begins today. The men face their annual giant slalom in Adelboden, Switzerland, and there’s a GS for the women in Spindleruv Mlyn, Czech Republic. Each site will have a slalom Sunday.
U.S. alpine skiers have been feisty through the first period of the winter: Four wins, a hefty handful of top-3 results, a couple of World Cup discipline leaders.
As things resume, Parkite Lindsey Vonn leads the women’s downhill and combined points; She’s already won three races and passed Picabo Street – one of her earliest heroines – to become No. 2 on the all-time U.S. women’s list. Tamara McKinney has 18 World Cup victories (nine in slalom, nine in GS) with Vonn at 10 (seven downhills, two super-Gs and that super combined in St. Anton, Austria, before Christmas). Street had nine wins, all in DH.
On the men’s side, Bode Miller – training on his own this season – won his 26th World Cup race in Bormio on Dec. 29. That puts him one shy of Phil Mahre’s U.S. record for wins. (Could he do it today? He was second in Adelboden in 2005 when he won the overall World Cup crown, the first American to do so since Mahre and McKinney turned the trick in 1983.)
Overall, Miller is third in the men’s points with Ted Ligety fifth.
Ligety has been a virtual whisker away from winning this season. As Adelboden prepared to stage this weekend’s races, he’s leading the giant slalom standings.
Adelboden is considered by many to be the best GS hill on the circuit although Ligety might put Alta Badia, Italy, and Bad Kleinkirchheim, Austria, on the GS “podium,” too.
He’s got three podiums, starting with a second-place showing in the opening race of the season on a glacier last October in Austria.
“I’m really impressed with the way Ted’s been skiing. He’s one of the fastest guys out there, if not the fastest in GS,” coach Sasha Rearick said. “He has laid down some absolutely blazing runs.”
From Adelboden, the men head to Wengen, Switzerland, for the 78th Lauberhorn Race Weekend. The schedule calls for a super combined, the Lauberhorn downhill and a slalom.
Miller won the Lauberhorn a year ago. After winning in Bormio, he said he does better the tougher courses – Wengen is the longest on the circuit, upwards of 2-1/2 minutes – because they force him to focus harder.
Trivia question: Who was the first American man to win a World Cup DH, and where did he do it? And when?
Trivia answer: Bill Johnson skied off course, then came back onto the course and won the 1984 Lauberhorn, just before the Olympics in Sarajevo.
After the Czech Republic, the women have one more weekend of gate-running, heading next weekend to Maribor, Slovenia, for their annual GS-on-Saturday-slalom-on-Sunday lineup.