Avon, CO – Bode Miller, returning to the World Cup following his absence from the circuit last year, turned in a disappointing 66th in Thursday’s sole training run before Friday’s Birds of Prey downhill at Beaver Creek.
“The snow is great and the speeds are low, which is unfortunate for a downhill,” said Miller. But I think that can change too. It’s really turny, but different style turns. The others are kind of linked together, single gate, really pretty hard fall line turns. These are really traversing across the hill, huge swinging turns. It’s a challenge.”
While a boon for upcoming holiday visitors to Colorado ski resorts, Beaver Creek’s World Cup stop this week has been saddled by over a foot of new snow this week that scrapped both previously scheduled downhill training runs and forced course volunteers to work overtime to clear the snow from the course. On top of that, race organizers have realigned the course to include the upper part of Raptor, the 2015 FIS Alpine World Ski Championships women’s speed track, and the bottom part of the traditional Audi Birds of Prey men’s course
“It’s a different hill now,” Miller added. “It doesn’t feel anything like the normal course all the way from the top flats to the to where it breaks over. Now you come through Pumphouse, even at race speeds, you’re going to be going 30-40 miles per hour slower, which is a total change. In the bottom is the same so it’s still going to be a fun hill; it’s just tough to make the adjustments.”
Miller’s fellow U.S. Ski Teammates, however, fared better with the trickier course on Thursday. Marco Sullivan, Erik Fisher, Bennett Bryce and Ted Ligety finished 24th, 29th, 31st and 36th, respectively.
But America’s lone standout on Thursday was Travis Ganong. The nine-year team veteran, now 25, cranked an impressive seventh-place finish in sub-zero temperatures after mastering the realigned course’s tricky middle section.
“We had no idea really how it would be during inspection, because you never know what the speeds are going to be like. It was a fun first run. It has all the elements. It has big jumps in the bottom. The speeds are just low, but I think that’s just because the snow is so cold,” Ganong said.
“In the top section, there’s three single turns and then it goes into three double-gate turns, and after that last single and into the two doubles, it’s really blind, you can’t see any of the gates. So it’s hard to know when to transition into the next turn,” he explained. “That’s definitely the key section, because if you’re able to pull those turns off well and go on that last traverse high and without finding all the bumps, you can carry all your speed on the flat. That’s kind of how you’re going to win on this hill.”
Ganong finished just over a half second behind Thursday’s leader, Canadian Erik Guay, of Mont-Tremblant, Quebec, who himself is enjoying a strong return to World Cup racing following an injury.
Friday’s downhill begins at 12:45 p.m. EST, and NBCSN will provide same-day television coverage in the U.S. beginning at 10 p.m. EST.