KRASNAYA POLYANA – Though still far from tame, the Olympic men’s downhill course is being brought back down to earth over concerns that its enormous jumps could cause injury during Sunday’s medal race at the Sochi Games.
Late on Friday small alterations were made to the profile of the “Russian Trampoline,” a critical jump about halfway through the 2.17-mile long track. The jump sent top racers flying well over 200 feet Friday during the second of three training runs on the course.
Race referee Guenter Hujara said his second-in-command would oversee the shaving of snow from the lip of the jump in order to reduce the height and distance of the racers’ flight. The racers were hitting it skiing well over 70 miles per hour and landing on a steep and icy pitch.
Charles Krupa/AP
Bode Miller of the U.S. says he is ready to go for Sunday’s Olympic downhill after Friday training.
The change came after some racers and coaches suggested that the jumps were potentially dangerous as the course got faster. Aksel Lund Svindal of Norway, a gold-medal favorite who was second in the downhill in 2010, estimated that top racers went about 30 to 50 feet farther off the jumps on Friday than they did in a previous training run Thursday.
“They definitely increased,” Svindal said Friday. “I think today was the limit. They can’t get any longer…That’s probably as far as we should go on this course.”
Matthias Mayer of Austria was the fastest man down the track Friday, finishing in 2 minutes, 6.51 seconds. Bode Miller was sixth despite a major mistake about two thirds of the way down. He and three other Americans – Travis Ganong, Marco Sullivan and Steven Nyman – will race on Sunday.
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Bode Miller soars over one of the jumps on a course that officials are working to alter to ensure the safety of the competitors in the men’s downhill on Sunday at the Sochi Games.
Ganong, a 25-year-old Californian ranked in the top 20 worldwide, said skiing off the Lake Jump, a dropoff that sends top racers about 250 feet at speeds approaching 80 miles per hour, was like being in a “flying dream.” He said the jumps were even bigger two years ago during a test event on the track at Rosa Khutor.
The women, who will race on an adjacent trail next Wednesday, had their own training run Friday, with Fabienne Suter of Switzerland finishing fastest in 1 minute, 42.70 seconds. California’s Stacey Cook was sixth, 0.69 behind.
Miller, 36, is racing in his fifth Olympics and looking to win downhill gold, one of the more coveted honors in a sport where he has already set countless records. On Friday he said he experimented with his line rather than go for the fastest time in a training run.
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Ioan Valeriu Achiriloaie of Romania slides into the safety net after crashing on the Lake Jump.
“The fatigue level was way higher today for everybody,” Miller said. “It’s a little bit more rattly, the speeds are definitely up and guys are putting more pressure, trying to make up speed.”
He said experience taught him not to invest too much energy in training runs.
“It’s easy for guys who are so excitable to push too hard and do too much too early,” Miller said. “I definitely know that winning a training run doesn’t matter for much. I’ve experienced that so many times. I think I have a good process for how to build to the race and be ready.”
He also confessed that the bumpy surface caused trouble for his chronically sore left knee, which was subjected to microfracture surgery in 2012 and forced him to forgo competition for the entire 2012-13 season.
“When you’re bouncing around at my age it doesn’t feel that good,” he said.
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