ALPINE SKI WORLD CUP. Blue skies. Bright sun. Big mountains. Brilliant snow. Perfect conditions for ski racing in the Canadian Rockies - well, almost perfect - given the thermometer in Lake Louise dipped to a frigid -34 Celsius this morning.

"Set up for the Bombardier Lake Louise Winterstart is going well up at The Lake Louise Ski Area! Thanks to all who are working hard in -30C weather!", photo Bombardier Lake Louise Winterstart

“It was even colder than that yesterday morning,” said Darrell MacLachlan chief of race for this weekend’s Lake Louise Winterstart World Cup.

“On Monday it was -51 Celsius at the top of the course, now that’s cold!”

“I’ve seen it cold in Lake Louise, but never this cold for this long in November,” said Canadian Alpine Ski Team head coach Paul Kristofic.

“Usually it gets colder the week after the men’s races here, when the women arrive,” Kristofic added with a grin.

“But this year it looks like we’re getting the freezing temps and they’re going to get the warm weather. Oh well, it’s payback I guess, and it’s a killer!”

For some of the more junior racers on the Canadian squad, training during a cold spell like this one has been an eye opener on the less glamourous aspects of earning a living ski racing around the world.

“It’s been nasty and brutal out there all week! Training in this kind of weather is no day at the beach!” said a smiling Tyler Nella, one of the Canadian Alpine Ski Team’s young guns who spent most of last week training at nearby Nakiska.

“I can’t believe how cold it is. I think this is the coldest weather I’ve ever trained in. The windchill factors have been crazy,” added team mate Dustin Cook, winner of last season’s overall Nor-Am Cup title.

For well-seasoned Canadian veterans like Manuel Osborne-Paradis though, the freezing temperatures of The Great White North are best handled with a warm smile and a good sense of humour.

“The last few days have been freaky cold, but this is Canada not Florida. Skiing is an outdoor, cold weather sport and sometimes it gets a little chilly or really, really, really chilly. You just gotta deal with it and ‘chill’ when it’s chilly I guess,” Osborne-Paradis said with a laugh.

Swiss veteran Didier Cuche’s take on the recent cold snap in the Rockies is, like Osborne-Paradis’, tinged with humour.

“Yes, it’s been very cold, but after four or five days you get used to it,” Cuche said with wry smile, before quickly finishing off the statement with a wink and adding, “USED to it?!” as a well-timed comedic punch line.

For others, like Norway’s Aksel Lund Svindal, the current deep freeze is uncomfortable but manageable and bearable as long as you use common sense to deal with it.

“The cold hasn’t been a surprise to us because we’ve been training in very cold weather almost all month. First we were in Sweden and it was really cold. Then we were training in Nakiska last week and it was extremely cold there too, so you can say we are pretty used to it now,” Lund Svindal said.

“When it’s this cold my biggest problem is my feet. There is almost no insulation from the cold when you are in race boots because they’re really not made for skiing in extreme conditions. It’s tough because there is nothing between my socks and the plastic of the boot which is quite thin and it’s the only thing between my feet and the freezing temperatures. So to stay warm, I’ve been going indoors after every practice run to warm up my feet. As soon as I get inside, I go straight to the washroom to find hand dryers. Then I take my boots off, lie on the floor on my back and stick my feet in the air up close to dryers to let the hot air warm them.”

A good sense of humour and common sense solutions may be useful cold combatants for some - but for others they are insufficient insulation in real life terms. For these cold fighters, it’s what you wear on your skin that matters most.

“We noticed white spots on the cheeks of the racers and coaches last week in Nakiska and we know that’s the first sign of frostbite. So we have been using a lot of tape on the faces of our athletes this week - a lot! Cold weather like this can be dangerous if you aren’t careful, so we’ve been making sure everyone is dressed properly and are asking them to go inside after one practice run to get warm” said Haavard Tjorhom, head coach of Norwegian men’s World Cup team.

There is good news though on the frozen horizon for lovers of warmer weather. Weekend weather forecasts for Saturday’s season opening downhill and Sunday’s season opening super-G are considerably balmier relative to the bone-chilling temperatures currently cloaking Lake Louise. Saturday and Sunday’s highs are expected to be in the -8 to -10 Celsius area with lows in the more bearable low teens.

And at least one racer is taking the weather service’s forecast as gospel.

“I’m definitely sure it’ll be much warmer on the weekend, this kind of weather can’t last forever. It’s a cold snap and sooner or later it’ll snap out of it itself,” said Canadian veteran racer Robbie Dixon.

But before Lake Louise goes tropical this coming weekend, it will be more of the same – the frosty low for Wednesday – the first downhill training run of the new speed season will be a nippy -35 Celsius and undoubtedly facial duct tape and protective ski masks will be the race fashion statement of the day.

By Michael Mastarciyan
FISalpine.com
Tuesday 23 November 2010

Aspen a favorite for racers

Mother Nature hasn’t left any uncertainty about the Winternational in Aspen, Colorado, this season. The setting is indeed a winter wonderland as the FIS Audi alpine women’s World Cup swings into nonstop mode this weekend in the historical U.S. town with a giant slalom on Saturday and slalom Sunday.

Notoriously one of the steeper, more difficult courses on the women’s tour - also the highest, with a base elevation of about 2,500 meters - several athletes claim Aspen is one of their favorite venues and are eager to put their mark down on the token U.S. World Cup hill.

“I like the slope there. It’s technical and it’s usually hard,” said Maria Pietilae-Holmner, who has been training in Colorado all week with the Swedish team and who has had some of her top World Cup results in Aspen, missing the GS podium by less than half a second last year in fourth place, finishing sixth in GS and seventh in slalom the year before and fifth in GS in 2006.

“It’s one of my favorite races of the year, so I’m looking forward to going there,” she said from Vail on Tuesday. “I like it when it’s challenging. Last year it was pretty icy, but I like it. I hope I can do something good there. I’m pretty good at the ice, I think I have good skis and good stuff for those conditions.”

Last year rapidly changing weather and snow conditions rendered the injected Aspen course extremely icy and the first runs of both the GS and slalom yielded a number of crashes. It was world GS champion Kathrin Hoelzl who came through with the GS win for her first ever World Cup victory, beating Austrian Kathrin Zettel (who is not competing in Aspen this weekend in order to continue rehabilitating an injured hip) by two tenths of a second. Italy’s Federica Brignone finished third for her first career World Cup podium.

“I really like Aspen,” said Brignone, who has also been training in Vail all week. “For me, the most important thing is it’s never the same. The slope is really difficult to understand. It is narrow. You have to ski straight. You have to ski and not sleep.”

Italian teammate Nicole Gius concurs with Brignone’s take on the venue. Gius first raced in Aspen in 2002, when she was seventh in slalom and had the same result again in 2004. In 2008 she was ninth in GS and last year she took eighth in both races.

“For me it’s the same … I like Aspen,” Gius said. “I think the preparation of the slope is very good. I like icy slopes – maybe not so much like last year – but icy is better than too soft.”

In last year’s slalom, Sarka Zahrobska came through with the victory – for the second straight year – even after crashing in the previous day’s GS. The race was also a big one for Austria’s Marlies Schild, who took her first podium after an entire year off rehabilitating a severely broken leg as teammate Kathrin Zettel finished third.

Schild also has a friendly history with Aspen, having landed her first ever World Cup podium there in the 2002 slalom and tallying it as one of her many slalom victories in 2006. She also finished second in the World Cup downhill in Aspen in 2007.

“I like Aspen a lot,” said Schild, who is also planning on racing her first GS in two years on Saturday. “I’ve always liked it.”

U.S. racers didn’t fair well at their home venue at last year’s races, although the team did well in Aspen in 2008, when Lindsey Vonn came as close as she ever has to a World Cup GS podium in fourth.

Vonn views Aspen as the stop on the tour that functions as her haven of support from fans and family who can’t make it to the faraway World Cup races.

"It's always special to race in Aspen," Vonn said. "I know all my friends from Vail will be over to see the best skiers in the world go head-to-head on Colorado snow. My two aunts are coming out from Wisconsin and they haven't seen me ski since I was 12. Plus my great aunt and uncle will be there along with Thomas' parents, my friends and then entire Vonntourage. We don't get that kind of support anywhere else."

Aspen has received more than 60 centimeters of snow in the last week but the forecast for this weekend’s races is calling for mild temperatures and partly cloudy skies.

The first run of Saturday’s GS is scheduled for 10 a.m. local time with the second run at 1 p.m. The same time slots follow for Sunday’s slalom.

by Shauna Farnell/fisski.com
FISalpine.com
Wednesday 24 November 2010