It seems like a while ago but continuing with the world champs recap: A highlight of the Championship other then Lindsay Vonn’s 2 gold’s which could easily have been 4. was watching young Laura Gut. We don’t often see the women race so maybe this youngster has been doing it for a while but she charged in VDI and has such charisma she promises to be good for skiing for a while. Her aggressive skiing and seemingly carefree fun attitude are reminiscent of a certain American male skier who popped on the scene a decade ago. Also seeing Resi back in the start house added some excitement to the women’s races, that girl has some energy; although our afternoons spent playing volleyball proved she is still a spaz. On the other side of the coin it was tough to see Julia struggling with her body and confidence in such a big way. However I don’t worry about Julia too much once she puts the nagging injuries behind her and finds the inspiration to focus on skiing she will be right back at the top. She is to good and has too much mental game to struggle for long.

A nice aspect of world champs is settling into one place for 2 weeks it allows for a routine to be established, and big part of our routine was sporting each afternoon. The traditional teams tend to stick to volleyball or other games with a low risk of injury. Wise. Maybe predictably Team America prefers basketball, soccer, or hockey. Regardless World Champs allows a core group of sportlers to play together over a period of time developing rivalries and companionship which is a lot of fun. As a bonus it is a great way for coaches to “get to know their athletes”. It is also fun to play with other nations and to see how there athleticism translates to their skiing or vise versa. The most exciting young skier on tour (I think the most exciting period) is Marcel Hirscher. He is a 19-year-old Austrian who has already won world Jrs a couple of times, I think the GS and SL last year. He broke through last year finishing on the podium in at least the last 2 slaloms. He is a typical youngster that skis super aggressive and dynamic. The crazed Austrian ski fans will love him for years to come as he is an exciting contrast to the great yet to efficient and calculating- thus boring Benni Raich. Unfortunately Hirscher switched equipment this off-season from Blizzard to Atomic. The Atomic Slalom skis are not working for anyone this year especially for someone small in stature like Hirscher and he cant yet handle the GS skis which are great for a bigger skier. I am sure the Atomics will work out in the long run for the youngster, but if he was still on Blizzard I think he would winning a bunch of Slaloms skiing in a new school wicked exciting way. Anyway he played volleyball with us a couple of times and was not as crazy good athletically as imagined he would be. Speaking with his father, who is at every race and plays a big role in his sons skiing life I get the impression he is more of an athlete in Darron Rhalves mold. Not great at ball sports but explosive and is into the adrenalin sports like motor cross water skiing etc. I had an interesting conversation with his father in Zagreb Croatia as we were playing flag football on a frozen dirt field. He was at first amazed that we were playing on an uneven dirt patch in the middle of winter, but after watching Bode and others dive to make catches coming up bloody with teammates yelling encouragement and opponents yelling profanities while his son was riding a stationary bike to no where under fluorescent lights in a 7th floor conference room he came appreciate the American way. Yes injuries can and will happen and when they do it sucks worse then anything. Ted severely hurt his season 3 years ago when he rolled an ankle playing football in season and Bode did nt help his chances at the Olympics when he rolled an ankle just before the slalom. But these are young men who love sports don’t party in season and never get to go home. For them and for the coaches it is a release in what can be a long winter on the road. I must interject to say outside of Bode who is pretty much good at all sports, Jimmy Cochran is the current alpha ball sport athlete of the US Ski Team, he is a fantastic athlete.

To the races Bode blew out in both the GS and Slalom. The GS was not surprising. The month of January is filler with DH’s And SL’s and with the ankle we couldn’t train much GS. On top of that Bode isn’t psyched with the GS skis. The Slalom was sealed probably when FIs decided to inject the hill the night before the race. Evidenced by something like only 3 or 4 of the top 15 finishing the race it was unnecessary and didn’t suit Bode’s go for broke style very well. Since then Team America has been on vacation as Bode went home for Dacey’s birthday and an overdue visit. At this time I am flying back to Europe to get ready for the final 7 races of the 08/09 season, time flies whether you are having fun or not. Haha. I hope everyone enjoys the slopes as the sun gets higher in the sky. (People on the east coast now what I am talking about)

Team America is taking a short hiatus from the white circus, so I write to you from the good old USA not from the trailer in some parking lot in central Europe. The topic most people want to hear about is probably the lack of results at World Champs for Bode. Running through the events: Super G Bode went on his hip twice, the first time wasn’t a patented pop back up barely any time lost hip check and cost him any chance of winning. Its not the first time this year bode went out in this manner and probably wont be the last. As everyone knows Bode skis to his limits and it’s a fine line to when one of those boots, normally the inside, brushes the snow and boots out. It is a frustrating phenomenon for everybody, us, fans sponsors but it’s the way it goes when u ski to the limit. Of course the question that most arises is why ski to that limit when he doesn’t theoretically need to to find his way onto the podium. Only Bode can answer that for certain but having watched him for a number of years it is his norm to not approach skiing in a way everyone else thinks he should, to simply try an maximize results. He takes pleasure from pushing it to his limits even if that means results be damned. This is especially true of super G and super combined, events Bode should dominate. At the world cup level in super g, racers find speed everywhere thus controlling your speed and line is crucial to winning, Bode doesn’t find much satisfaction in doing this therefore he wins a lot fewer races in this discipline then he could. As for the Bellevadere course, yes it is steep the whole way and was stupid glazed slick ice but I prefer it to the flat easy rolling tracks like Val Gardena or Kitzbuhl which is a great downhill but a lame super G.

Onto the DH where bode was handily ahead at the final split on the last training run before standing up and cruising into the finish. He had strong performances on this track last season as well winning the DH portion of the combine by a huge margin so all looked good. On race day the sun was out for the first 5 guys (kucera was number 2 I think). Then gone for 10 then back for Cuche at 16. Then the clouds rolled in again at 17. Maybe 10 to 15 seconds before Bode went the clouds became fog and he was blinded for 25-30 seconds of his run. When he was not in the fog the light was still flat and horrible. Immediately after Bode went they had a course hold for 10 minutes or so then sent Svindal who still had bad light and was slow. They held again for Walchofer or tried to but the chief of race was walked on on the radio so the starter didn’t hear the call for a hold and Walchofer went out of the gate, he came down into 12th and was awarded a provisional rerun which he came down into 9th, the provisional run was not allowed and the Austrian federation went ballistic which is no surprise because they are a bunch of assholes. But back to Bode any coach standing on the hill knew he had no chance in the conditions he had to ski in. Before the race if u would have asked any coach that watches all the Dh’s who would win if the conditions were equal, bode would have been the pick almost unanimously with a couple of votes going for Cuche. Bode’s reaction was it’s a part of the sport, a pretty strong statement from someone who knows the pundits will soon forget the conditions or never understood them in first place. Visibility or no visibility the record will be written that Bode failed again in another big race.

So minus the bad luck of weather being a a factor in a sport held outdoors in the mountains in the wintertime why was the best downhiller in the world given virtually no chance to do his thing on race day at world championships. The decisions to race or to hold comes down to one man Gunther Hujera the FIS race director. He relies on a team of people who work for him but he is the dictator of men’s world cup racing. He has a tough job dealing with many different interests, TV, safety, all the coaches and racers etc. I think he does a good job and does his best to be fair. In this case he could have called a hold before Bode went and considering the fog Bode had to race through in hindsight he would have. But stuff happens fast, the racer before Bode had better light then Svindal who went after Bode and a 10-minute hold. The forecast on this day was for the weather to be bad all day but to get worse as the day went on. Prior to Bode the light had come in and out but had not been horrible for anyone so Gunther was hoping to get the top contenders down before things got real bad. It was a miss calculation that is apart of our sport. In the end it was a shame the playing field was not level and the results were greatly decided by your start position. Up next a report on the Super Combined, GS and Slalom.

OK, Long time no speak but Team America has been rolling along even though the results have not been all that great. 2 race highlights thus far, 2nd at Levi and 2nd at Val Gardena, with the Slalom result being of more significance to us primarily because the downhill in Val Gardena was more tame then usual and kind of ho hum. For the Slalom we had very good preparation at remote area in Norway where we could turn on the t bar and water any time of the day or night. We were lucky because conditions are so damn hard to dial in in Oct and Nov. The world cup schedule pushes the limits starting so early so we have no choice then to chase the snow but there really isn’t that much of it that time of year. People are making a big deal of Bode “focusing” on slalom this year. It is somewhat true but like most things it is more complicated then bode just “focusing on slalom” this year. He has trained way more slalom then any other event the last 3 years. Why? Because it is the easiest event to get good training, in season or out. Also because he loves it. Also because he was struggling in it for a variety of reasons and wanted to turn that around. So yeah he focuses on it but he has been focusing on it for a while and he is still focused on the other 3 events so make what you will of it.

The rest of the events he has either crashed or been negatively affected by the weather. It’s amazing what a slight head wind will do. I would be somewhat skeptical myself had I not tested skis with the Head guys last year a bunch. During the test each guy will take around 24 runs on 5 or 6 different pairs of skis. When a small breeze came up our times would get 3-4 tenths slower on a dead straight away 19 second run. If you get a strong headwind throughout your DH run you cant win. But much respect to the ski testers for head and all the company’s it’s a cold tough job done in the shadows but has a great bearing on world cup speed results.

In Lake Louise bode and the rest of the top DH group had wind and they were all in the teens or worse, in the super G bode was leading at the split and blew a shoe. He made a recovery most others would not have made to stay out of the fence and not get injured something lost to most observers; durability is a big part of the game.

The Beaver Creek bode won the training run by a second then crashed hard in the DH. He was banged up pretty good but has raced on through it. Lingering from the crash is a bothersome ankle that has affected his performance up until now. We are hopefully getting that under control and will continue rolling around Europe seeking w’s for Bode and a general good time for the rest of us. Merry Christmas and a happy new year.

Congrates to Jake Z for qualifying in Alta Badia (My favorite Gs on circuit)

Jitloff 15th Alta Badia SL

Virgil, Rewk, Mick, Sully, Nyman, TJ, Fish for a historic day at Val Gardena.

The first race came and went, and if you are reading this I am sure you already know Bode was 10th. A fine first run and a lackluster second run kept him off the podium by just over 3 tenths (I think) but off the top step by 1.5ish.

Racers seem to approach Solden in many different ways, for some its a preseason race. For some, its 1 out of only 9 or 10 GS’s. For others, it is their chance to show everyone how hard and fast they have been training all summer or it is a gauge of how they are skiing. For others acts as a catalyst to get into race mode for the upcoming season.

It is well-chronicled that Bode has had great success in Solden, as he has at many sites. There are probably a thousand reasons, with the first being he is pretty good. Others probably are: he doesn’t approach it in any of those aforementioned ways he just likes to race. Its a gnarly hill with substantial flats. It is a rare time for a 4 event-er to train for a single event. This result wasn’t as great and Team America wanted a good one, but there were many positives and there are many more races.

Prior to the race, we had good training at the Stubai Glacier near Innsbruck, Austria. Bode is healthy and hungry. Tschunti, Bode’s new service man, works round the clock to find the good ones, and new coach Brains is a master bus driver, glove and conversation maker, amongst everything else.

I don’t like it in these blogs when people promise things to come and usually don’t deliver but I am gonna do it anyway and say I will try come up with some photos and stuff in the future.

Highlights from Solden:
-to legit to quit (Jitloff) 20th place,
-shred doing his thing 3rd,
-young and old of Switzerland both killing it,
-Schlop looking young spry and powerful with his magic touch in training.