Beaver Creek GS Preview

The season is just getting started and already we have a new star on the scene, not that he should have been ignoring his presence. He is the reigning GS World Champion. He has won at every level on which he has raced. His name is Carlo Janka(SUI) and I doubt we can keep him off the podium tomorrow either. GS is his bread and butter, always has been.
The Beaver Creek GS has a few characteristics that need to be covered. It is run on the bottom of the Downhill so it is not injected with water. It is not super-slick. Instead it is grippy, or aggressive as the athletes like to call it. It is very grabby with their extremely sharp skis but hard enough that the skis need to be like razors. The very cold weather they have had recently guarantees the snow will remain hard and grippy and very cold through the race tomorrow.
The hill starts at the top of Russi’s Ride and runs to skier’s right of the first tree-island and traverses across to the skier’s left of the second island. This section can be a bit choppy because the hill has been groomed vertically earlier in the week and there are only 2 DH turns here when there are about 16 GS turns. Through the transition of the 2 DH turns there has been very little pressure on the snow and the groom lines still exist. Add to it that it is a fall-away right foot section and it becomes obvious why it breaks away on the right foot in the GS. Always happens, probably always will in Beaver Creek. Then the track bends around the second island and off Screech Owl. You need to carry your speed across the flat to Golden Eagle by making an excellent turn on the back-side of tree-island 2. You’ve done that, gotten a little light on the jump and tuck turns to Golden Eagle and off you go. Things will start to turn more as you approach Golden Eagle and you head off the pitch for 4 very steep turns down into the Abyss which ordinarily has a hard compression at the bottom with a tough right foot delay in the middle of the fall-away. You nail that cleanly and set up the last pitches and find the fall-line, staying ahead of the rhythm until the finish below Red Tail Jump. There is one more, tricky spot there as you come off the little Red Tail Pitch. It is not difficult but you are tired and if the course set turns a little more or a little deep on the flat, one chiseled turn can dump precious hundredths, or even tenths.
The two course setters are Mateo Guadanini(ITA) and Mauro Pini(SUI). Mateo has been around the World Cup as the Italy GS Coach since the 2005-06 season and has set at least 3 GS runs per year since then but has never set in Beaver Creek. Winners of runs set by Mateo include Bode Miller, Ted Ligety and Max Blardone. Joel Chenal has won twice when Mateo has set and both times in Adelboden, which really does not have much to do with Beaver Creek. Mateo’s tendency is to open races setting 26 meters and opens gradually to 30, even on the steeper, more traditional trails like Adelboden and Kranjska Gora. This is Mauro’s first set on the men’s World Cup.
Beaver Creek is easy to set on because it rolls a lot and is not that steep. It also traverses near the top, giving the setter more room to set gates without taking up any vertical meters. So a course setter can set virtually whatever he wants and still make the minimum number. He can set a lot of delays (we have seen as many as 5) and he can open it up a lot. It is not unusual to see 34 meter turns on the flatter areas. The course setter can play around a lot. He can make it easier on the back of rolls and can play with the terrain. The compression coming off the narrow and dark Golden Eagle pitch can cause some trouble if the setter loses focus or decides to be an SOB. Over the last few years, we have seen the setters open with 26 meters on the start pitch, mostly because they want a clue of gate-count before they open it up. But that is not necessary here. If you wanted to open at 30 and go at 30-32 meters the whole way, you could still make minimum.
There is one more characteristic about the Beaver Creek GS. It is on a Downhill track. This gives advantage to guys who have been on the track all week. It always has, on any GS run on the bottom of Downhills. That is one of the reasons we started running Ted and Dane Spencer and Erik Schlopy in Downhill training or in the Super-G in past seasons. We did it mostly to get them used to the snow and visual changes in the hill. This seriously helps and it happens in Bormio every time, and Sestriere last spring as well. AND it will happen again in Whistler! It is a very similar track, on the bottom of the DH. Add the large turn size and watch out for the DH boys, and Ligety who is one of the best tight-set Super-G skiers in the world. Cuche, Svindal, Ligety, Janka, Raich and Miller all ran the DH and/or Combi. Look for all of them near the top of the result sheet in GS.
Other athletes to watch:
Romed Baumann(AUT): He ran the Super Combi and he makes nice, clean, large turns. Very simple in his approach to skiing. He is disciplined.
Kjietl Jansrud(NOR): A big, strong kid born in 1985. He skis all disciplines and can challenge for a high finish here.
Max Blardone(ITA): Max has done very well here in the past but has to ski with a lot of intensity which is one of his trademarks. Not only does he need to do that but he also needs to be almost mistake-free. His margin for error is smaller because he has not been on the hill and because he is a lot smaller than most of the other contenders.
Davide Simoncelli(ITA):Very similar to Max in that he needs to ski with intensity and be clean at the same time.
Marcel Hirscher(ITA): He won the NorAm GS races in Aspen last week but that was a much different story. Those races were on a steeper hill with shorter gate distances and injected snow. All that being said, he is a tremendous talent. Marcel was born in 1989.
CANADIANS:
JP Roy had the best opener in Soelden for the Canadian boys. He can definitely do damage on this hill and could pop another top 10. The other one who should be able to mark his comeback is Francois Bourque. He needs this race to boost his confidence. The distances on the hill will allow him to carve more effectively. Robbie Dixon starts 34 and can definitely do well on this hill. He meets all the criteria.

MORE AMERICANS:
Tommy Ford: Tommy is a 1989 year of birth athlete out of Bend, Oregon. He has displayed excellent GS skills on all surfaces and all types of hills over the last 2 seasons. He has moved up quickly through the ranks and is ready for his big breakthrough. He will score GS World Cup points in this race.
Tim Jitloff: Jit had a great season last year and his best finish was 5th in Sestriere. That hill has very similar characteristics to Beaver Creek so look for him to make something happen.
Jake Zamansky: Jake got it done here last year and needs to do it again to be able to board the plane to Europe with confidence and head into Alta Badia knowing he can do it again.
Andrew Weibrecht: Horse has been on a roll of late and with an 11th today don’t count anything out. It is a tough task to break-in from his late number but he has been skiing well and confidence goes a long way.
The Beaver Creek GS is often a very fun one to watch because the boys go hard from start to finish and they tend to risk pretty hard, even on run 1. The margin is often small between 1st and 5th and also tight to get in the top 30. Look for the boys coming around the 1st tree-island, where they tend to run the line out a little and try to pull it back in the traverse. Sometimes that low line just pulls them too much, causing some big crashes. If they go a little too straight off of Screech Owl; they can kill all their speed for the flat. And a too-late line around the second island can cause a similar outcome on the flat because they do not have enough hill to get their speed back at that point. Too straight off Golden Eagle also causes trouble for that pitch, often sending the boys off-course. From there down it is hammer time.
The all-important podium prediction: Janka, Ligety, Cuche.

Have fun watching the boys get after it. Then they pack up and head for Val d’Isere! It is hard work to get from Colorado to Val d’Isere. Get back to the hotel, pack up the cars and vans, drive to Denver, wait to check-in with all the other teams, get to the hotel late, stuff down a late dinner, get to bed. Then it’s up early and on the plane through wherever. Could be Toronto, Chicago, Atlanta, DC, Frankfurt, depending on your airline. Then the US boys will land in either Zurich or Munich and make the long drive to Val d’Isere. Last year I drove from Munich to Val d’Isere after this race in a blinding snow storm with a portion of the Autobahn closed. I had to hit the back roads just after Geneva for about 60 kilometers. All the way up the mountain road to Val d’Isere. Arriving there around 11 PM, 10 hours after I left Munich.
And last, congrats to the North American ladies in Lake Louise. Lindsey for her continued dominance of that hill, Emily Brydon in 3rd, Britt Janyk in 8th, Alice McKennis for her first top 10, Stacey in 11th, Julia 12th, Vanderbeek in 13th, Larisa Yurkiw in 16th!, Leanne in 23rd and Chlesea in 25th. That is a big day, girls and a lot of points for both teams! Enjoy.