WCSN Blogs

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Well the 2007-08 racing season is done for me. I finished up the year with a third place finish in the super G at the U.S. Nationals In Sugarloaf, Maine. It turned out to be a great race. After two days of 90+ MPH winds the snow was in great shape, and all of us racers were itching to get out of our hotel rooms! I skied well and it was tight but two of my good friends, Kevin Francis and Bryon Friedman were the best of the day.

Unfortunately because of the weather delays in Sugarloaf I had to leave town before the Downhill took place. I am up in Whistler, BC now doing some downhill training with the Canadian team and testing out some new Nordica skis that we will put into the rotation next season. It is difficult to find the time to actually train downhill because it takes so much effort to close down a run long enough to accommodate a full DH course. It also requires a lot of manpower to set up all the fences and protection to ensure the safety of us racers, so when I heard of this opportunity it was too good to pass up. Whistler is such an incredible mountain as well, even though it is always rated the best in North America I still think it does not get enough credit. This morning we trained from 7-10 o’clock and when we finished up I went and explored the mountain for a few more hours. I have a lot of respect for this ski area and I cannot wait til the rest of the world gets to see it close up when the Olympics roll through here in two years!

So rest assured that I am still fully immersed in winter. It is snowing up here now and the temps are hovering in the teens. I am not slated to really get out of my ski boots until the end of April as I have some Alaska adventures planned. With the racing over I can shift my mind into a different mode and it is definitely enjoyable after being very focused for the last five months.

I hope that everyone is enjoying the spring!

marco

I am at a bit of a loss on what to actually write about this week. I have not had a real action packed schedule for the last 10 days. The only event that I was qualified to compete in at the World Cup Finals was the Downhill, so when it was cancelled due to poor snow conditions I changed my plane ticket to come back to the states 4 days ahead of schedule. Steven Nyman and I packed our bags and rallied towards Munich where we caught a soccer game before getting on the plane the next morning. Steven has an ailing back so he went home to give his body a rest but I flew into Boston and am attempting to kill some time here before I head up to Sugarloaf, Maine on Tuesday, for the US Nationals.

The Nationals are a fun race to reconnect with friends that you have not seen all season. It is a fun vibe being the last major competition of the season, but unfortunately this year injuries are causing a lot of the World Cup racers to bow out of the festivities. Bode is no longer obligated to attend, being an independent racer and he has chosen to exercise that option and get some rest. Ted just announced that he will not attend due to a hand injury, Steven has back trouble and Macartney has been sidelined since his crash at Kitzbuhel. None of the World Cup speed coaches are attending the race either so that leaves me to battle the youngsters for the title of US downhill and Super G champion.

I am not implying that it will be easy. On the contrary it will probably be one of the tougher races of the season because it is a huge opportunity for some of the kids to get their name in the spotlight and I know they will be charging hard!

I will check in this week from the nationals and hopefully fill you in on my plans for the spring and summer. With the end of winter looming I am already thinking of how best to prepare for next season. After a bit of R and R of course. Talk to you later.

Marco

I can’t believe it. Matthias Lanzinger or “Lanzi” as he is commonly know on the World Cup tour had to have his lower left leg amputated yesterday after crashing this weekend in Norway. It is so surreal to me to think that in this day and age it is even possible to lose a limb in a skiing accident. Especially when that accident takes place at a World Cup venue.

I can only wish Lanzi the best in his recovery and his life that is now changed forever.

This marks the third weekend of the season that has been marred by a horrific injury. Beaver Creek when Aksel Svindal, was hospitalized for over a week with a massive cut in his leg and facial injuries. Kitzbuhel where Scott Macartney crashed spectacularly off the final jump and sustained a frightening concussion. And now Lanzi whose promising ski racing career was snuffed out quicker than you could blink.

Athlete safety is surely going to be the hot topic in the FIS meetings this Spring and as well it should be. The issue that I struggle with is where do you draw the line between the sport being exciting to watch and it being completely safe for the athletes. In every course, there are dangerous sections that cause racers to breathe a sigh of relief once we are safely through them. Those sections are fun to watch and fun to ski, when you can ski them well. Those sections also produce the most injuries. The biggest problem is when jumps are not built correctly and include a lip on the takeoff, or a takeoff that is not well defined. Keep in mind that it is not uncommon to hit these jumps traveling in excess of 70 mph so any irregularity in the surface of the takeoff can be devastating!

The reality is that there are always going to be high speed crashes in downhill ski racing. The FIS and the race organizers need to accept the responsibility of providing the best safety netting, the most sensible course setting conditions and the best medical personnel on hand!

As for myself I ended up to in the nets twice last weekend but luckily came out with no major injuries. Only one Downhill race to go, at the world cup finals in Bormio, Italy, next week. Only the top 25 racers in the rankings are invited to finals and it is going to be exciting as everybody is racing to solidify their standings for the season. Didier Cuche only has a five points of breathing room on Bode for the DH title. After my performance last weekend third place is out of reach for me but I now have three guys breathing down my neck for the fourth place spot which I am still clinging to by five points.

The World Cup DH team has now dwindled to two members, Steven Nyman and I are hanging out in Innsbruck right now, getting a little rest before we go down to Italy to train before Bormio. We also lost one of our coaches, Rewk Patten, to a freeskiing injury so we are running a serious skeleton crew. Nonetheless we are going to try and finish strong!

See ya,
Marco

Well we are finally back on the racing scene! It has been a nice little mid season break for the Downhill boys. Because of the cancellation in Val D’isere we have not raced since January 27 in Chamonix! It is an uncharacteristically long span between races but it has also been a nice rest to recharge the batteries for a big push at the end of the season.

We arrived in Whistler, BC last night and and we are racing a World Cup super-G here on Thursday. Today was one of those days that gives this mountain the reputation for being one of the greatest ski areas in the World! It is a bluebird day and we had a chance to train some GS in the morning and then head out freeskiing and exploring the mountain a little bit! Makes me want to come up here with no obligations and spend some time on the mountain. It is a skiers paradise and all the hype is definitely warranted, in my opinion.

Of course everything cannot always be glorious, the weather forecast is not looking spectacular, it is supposed to start storming tomorrow and and into the weekend. We can only hope for the best!My season has obviously been going well and it has been a lot of fun being home and celebrating my first World Cup win with friends and family. Everybody has been asking me how it felt to win one and what I have changed this season to see such a dramatic surge in my Downhill results. It is funny to me because I don’t really feel that much has changed.

I am learning that it is the small things that make a difference. I have a great new Nordica boot that is really solid and allows me to feel really balanced and stable in almost all conditions. I have been eating well. Actually finding out that I need to eat a lot more than I think is normal to satisfy the needs of my body. Especially in Europe, where sometimes the cuisine is not optimal, our team has gotten a lot better at traveling with a lot of food and snacks that we all enjoy. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are a big staple of my diet, and obviously staying hydrated all the time is a big key to staying healthy! The greatest thing for me this winter is that there is snow everywhere! I love to go out and ski all morning before a race and last year that was not possible with so little snow in Europe. I have felt really comfortable all season simply because I have been skiing so much.

So those are a few factors that have contributed to my season. I feel like I could go off on this subject for a while so I will stop myself. I would like to share a lot more of my thoughts with all of you and hear your insights and for that reason I would like to start a website. I know I said that last year as well but I am not sure of what type of content I would like to include on the site and I am very curious on what people would actually like to see. I see a lot of athlete websites that are just a bio and some pictures and if I had a site I would like it to be more interactive. Where people could get a fresh perspective of what life is like on the World Cup.

Anyway if you have any ideas feel free to leave them in the comment box. I am going to do my best to throw down a fast super-G race here on Thursday. Remember we are in the pacific time zone so everybody can watch the race here on WCSN at a normal hour instead of waking up in the wee hours of the morning.

-Talk to you soon

Well, well, for those of you who have not heard, I won my first World Cup ski race last weekend in Chamonix, France.

I was stoked that it happened on one of the classic world cup downhill courses and the race was not affected by the weather at all. It was a nice sunny day that reminded me of being back home in Squaw, and I had one of the best runs that I have ever managed to pull off!

It feels really great to have accomplished a goal that I have been dreaming about for a long time. It is funny that before last weekend I always thought I would be satisfied to win just one World Cup. Just to be a part of that elite group, I thought would be enough. Now that I have one in the bag all I can think about is how I am going to win more.

One of the greatest parts was hearing from a ton of family and friends from back home, and knowing that they were all tuning in! Being in Europe all winter, we tend to get encompassed in our own little bubble. But to hear how stoked everybody was back home was really special for me!

So we have moved on. We are in Val D’isere this week. It is going to be a really cool race because we are on a course that has not been run since the Olympic Downhill was held here in 1992. It is refreshing to see something brand new since a lot of our venues are the same year after year. I am obviously feeling in good form as is our team.

TJ Lanning has been skiing great lately, and he is coming off of his best ever DH result last week. We also have Steven Nyman back, a week of rest is just what his ailing back needed and he is ready to charge! Ted Ligety and Andrew Weibrecht are also here for the combined but this downhill looks so steep and turny that I think both of those guys have a shot at throwing down some really fast runs!

This week is apparently some sort of British holiday and therefore the town of Val d’Isere is popping! Rumor is that there is not a bed available for miles around. Each week the race organizers are responsible for providing accommodations for all of the teams and this week they put us up in Club Med. Not sure if any of you have ever experienced a Club Med atmosphere before, but it is full of foreigners who are ready to party and ready to participate in planned activities around the clock. Each day there is a schedule for the guests to follow from aerobics to talent shows. It is a far cry from the quaint family-owned hotels where we usually stay, but the huge buffets of food are pretty good and it is definitely entertaining. This morning on my way to the hill, I passed a guy in a full bumblebee costume…..why not?

I hope that everybody is enjoying there winter. Sounds like it is dumping everywhere in the Western US this week, that is awesome and it makes me really excited to head home after this race.

Talk to ya soon,
Marco

Well it has been a crazy week. Kitzbuhel is in the books for another season and it did not come without a lot of emotional highs and lows. It was a weekend of decent results for me, but my thoughts and those of my teammates were laced with worry for our teammate who we had seen take a nasty spill early in the race.

Most of you have probably heard about or seen the crash that Scott Macartney endured and I am happy to report that he is doing well. He is going to need some rest but when we left him last night his biggest concern was getting the hell out of the hospital. Most athletes have a phobia of hospitals and Scott is no different. He is still trying to piece together what happened on the course Saturday afternoon, but ultimately we are all thanking our lucky stars that he is in such great shape! It was a different scene this weekend. Scott was No. 2 on course and so many racers, myself included, were still in the lodge, watching the first few competitors before we headed out for our own runs. To watch the drama unfold, to see him unconscious and quivering in the snow brought a wide range of emotions from the different competitors.

We are, in a sense, like a band of brothers out there all entwined in the same profession. When one of us goes down the concern for that athlete transcends any language barriers or territorial borders that may exist amongst us. I know that a lot of racers, especially Scott’s teammates, lost heart in the race at that moment. Unfortunately we are performers and there were 50,000 people there that day to watch us hurtle down the Hannenkam, the most famous downhill of them all. It makes me wonder if people really think we are crazy for doing what we do. I have always viewed the sport of downhill to be a fun and adrenaline-inducing ride. It is what we train for day in and day out. I feel it would be a shame to not exhibit the talents that we have acquired over the years. On the other hand there is a lot of risk. That risk seems to decrease as you get better and learn to master every different situation that could cause turmoil on the ski hill. Ironically that rise to greatness involves a lot of trial and error. I could equate it to any profession in that you have to take risks to be the best. Scott took a risk on Saturday by holding his tuck in a section where most people can’t or choose not to. There is a speed trap coming into the last jump at Kitz and Scott was clocked at 141 kilometers per hour, the fastest speed of the day! He can take pride in the fact that he did not hold back in what is one of the gnarliest sections of any ski hill in the world!

People question if it is really worth it, but he must have felt so alive that moment before it all went sideways! Having one of the more memorable runs of his career, screaming into the finish arena at 85 mph with 50,000 sets of eyes riveted on his every move. In talking with Scott I know that his mind has erased all memory of his wreck but retained the great feeling he had in the moments prior. To me that is a beautiful thing and it gives me hope that my friend will be back with the team soon. Screaming towards redemption.

Well well, here we are in Wengen, this place is ridiculous. Such a cool little Swiss postcard village. It has has been a long week. We ended up starting training runs a day early, on Tuesday, in anticipation of bad weather that would force the cancellation of at least one training day. That weather never came and so we ended up running 3 training runs which is a rarity on the World Cup. A lot of racers opted to skip the third training to rest the legs instead. One run down this course, which clocks in around two minutes, thirty seconds, is very taxing!

I was thinking of comparing it to swimming or running, which have races that last roughly the same duration, but those events are held in such a controlled environment. With ski racing the fatigue is similar to running an 800-meter race, but you still have obstacles coming at you at ridiculously fast speeds. At the end of Wengen, your ability to make conscious decisions is greatly impaired because of fatigue. Many runs, it is hard to feel your legs at the end of the course, a feeling that ski racers have dubbed “stumping out” because you feel like that is all you have to work with. The last 15 seconds, which features two quick GS-style turns and a steep jump/dropoff into the finish, has been aptly named “Stump Alley.”

If you are in the right frame of mind, stumping out is the last thing you are thinking of in the start. There are so many critical sections that you need to nail to be a contender here. I am not going to describe them all, but I have a tip for you. The whole course is not covered by cameras, so the spectator misses out on a lot. But the first racer out of the gate every year is trailed by a helicopter that shows his run from top to bottom. If you get a chance to watch the race on WCSN, make sure you check out that first racer, it fills in a lot of gaps in the live coverage.

So today is Saturday, we have all of our training runs behind us, and that storm that they were calling for finally did arrive. It has been snowing pretty hard for most of the night. There is probably close to 10 inches of snow outside our hotel, and I have heard there is quite a bit more up at the top of the course. The forecast is for it to clear out by tonight and be clear for the race tomorrow. We can only hope that holds true. After so much anticipation, it would be a bummer if we did not get to run here!

Click here to see my video weather report from Wengen.

It is up to the Swiss Army now! They serve as the course workers here at Wengen. There are a lot of them, and it will be up to them to clear the track of snow and get it race ready.

So if you are still reading at this point, you must be interested in ski racing and I have a question for you. What would you rather win, Kitzbuhel Downhill or the Olympic Downhill? There are a few who have won them both and solidified their place in ski racing lore, but if you had to choose one, which is the more prestigious title to mount above the fireplace?

I know what most racers think, but I am curious about the readers, so feel free to leave your answer in the comment box.

Thanks, Marco

Well it is the New Year and after numerous complaints I am making a resolution to get my blog scene rolling back on the right track!

I guess, for reasons unknown, I have not been motivated to blog the last month. But regardless of motivation, I know that this is one of the ways people keep tabs on me and the U.S. Team and therefore I am going to be better about providing you with the dirt!

So where do I begin? After Bormio, the DH team got a break to come back home for a week of rest and recuperation before the action-packed month of January. We flew in on the 30th and after a few delays, I arrived home at 2 a.m. and discovered that a water pipe had burst in my house! Luckily a friend of mine, Ebin Tormey, had stopped by my place the morning before I arrived and discovered the leak, but not before the house was blanketed with a half-inch of water! Needless to say, I have spent the majority of my first day home trying to get the place dried out! Other fun activities have included shoveling, jumping the dead battery in my truck, unsuccessfully trying to fix my broken snow-blower, paying a stack of overdue bills and shoveling some more!

That was the first day and since then, things have gotten considerably better! I guess I have come to expect surprises on a schedule that only allows us to come home about every month and a half during the winter.

After passing out well before the New Year arrived last night, I woke up this morning and decided to go out to Squaw and get in a few turns. After deciding that was a good plan, I looked at the clock and remembered that I have jet lag and it was only 3 in the morning! I took the opportunity to stoke the fire and turn on all the fans in my continued efforts to rid my house of unwanted moisture.

When the sun finally came up, I got my ski stuff in order and promptly fell asleep til 11. So my morning ski plans turned into afternoon ski plans, but I made it out nonetheless and it was a good time.

Skiing at Squaw for the first time every season always brings back a flood of good memories, and today was no different. It completely erased my glum mood, and now I am stoked for the rest of the week. There is a series of big storms forecasted to hit Tahoe starting on Thursday, so I am hoping it dumps before I head back to Europe on Sunday!

Once we do make it back to Europe, we have a huge month of racing lined up! On Sunday, we fly back to Zurich and head over to Wengen to race the famous Lauberhorn downhill, the longest and probably most diverse course on the tour. Then straight to Kitzbuhel for the Hannenkam — so excited for that one! After Kitz, we go to Val d’Isere and get to race on a downhill that has not been run since the Olympics in 1992! We finish the month out with a stop in Chamonix, which is another track that I have yet to race, but it is one of the classics so I am obviously looking forward to it!

I think our team is going to rack up some serious points this month. That is it for now, happy new year!

Wow, we are already ten days into the European leg of our season. Time flies over here, especially when we get so focused on one race, or a series of races. We were in Val Gardena until this morning. Val Gardena is situated in northern Italy. From the start of the downhill course you can look 360 degrees at amazing panoramic views of the Dolomites. They take a lot of pride in their annual ski race and this year they built the course to perfection. The famous camel jumps were massive this year, with the longest flight being measured around 85 meters (roughly 255 feet) from takeoff to landing! The camel jumps only claimed one racer this year, Silvan Zubriggen who tore up his knee after he crash landed, but every racer breathes a sigh of relief once you are safely past that section of the course! Another nice perk of the Val Gardena week is that the races always start at 12:15, to take advantage of what little sunlight creeps in to the steep valley, so we got to have a pretty relaxed schedule of leaving for the mountain at 9 every morning. Coupled with the amazing pasta for lunch and dinner every day, the group was pretty bummed to be leaving town.

We are up in Austria now, we are at a ski area called Altenmarkt, just south of Salzburg, for some Europa Cup races. It has been dumping snow here all week and the temps are cold so I think I will finally get that free skiing that i have been searching for! These Europa Cups are a chance for us to stay sharp in this week off that we have before we head to our next World Cup in Bormio right after Christmas. This week will be nice to get in some time just freeskiing and racing in a low stress environment. A good opportunity to work on equipment issues and to recharge the batteries before Bormio, which is notorious for being the most physically tiring course on the circuit.

I wil let you know how it goes.