STALLIONSItalian
At Bormio, Italy, Andrej Jerman wins the downhill;
the Stelvio track comes in second BY HANK MCKEE
20 | Ski Racing JANUARY 11, 2010
Bormio’s Stelvio is a mean and relentless downhill track. It comes
at the racer like a pit bull, snarling and biting with about the same
tenacity. During the annual pre-New Year’s Eve stop, it humbled
the competitors. Perhaps the lone exception was Slovenia’s fast
Andrej Jerman.
It was just the second downhill win for Jerman, a 31-year-old who got his
first start in 1998; his only other win was at Garmisch in 2007. The win at
Bormio was his second score of the season, as he was 18th at Beaver Creek
and out of the running in the other two downhills held. But this win was no
fluke. Coming in after winning the final training run, Jerman attacked early
and consistently down the two-mile Stelvio track, tucking where few others
managed for a time of 2:00.32.
Jerman now owns twice as many downhill wins as any countryman and this
one was convincing. He was more than a half-second ahead of second-place
Didier Defago, the Swiss racer who took both of the classic January downhills
(Wengen and Kitzbuehel) last season. And Jerman was a full second ahead of
the favorite for the win, Austria’s Michael Walchhofer, who was third.
The only racer to muster a challenge was disqualified. Mario Scheiber held
second until a measurement revealed his boots sat 1.52 millimeters too high on
his skis, a violation caused when he used the wrong boots for his binding set-up.
Fourth, in another surprising result, was Frenchman David Poisson. Didier
Cuche notched fifth to maintain his grip on the World Cup downhill stand-
