Ski Racing - February 27, 2012

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Thomsen had performed well in training, finishing third in the opening run, which gained him some notoriety and some press coverage. But he, like Reichelt and others, had missed a gate high on the course, one he said “I could have made.” Still that was training — no sense overdoing the risk factor in training.

Canadian Speed coach Johno McBride suggested he back off just a tad on top to be certain of making those tight gates, because, McBride told him, “You can be a contender.” Thomsen made a shambles of the top of the course, sliding around, dropping a hip on the ground. But from those gates down, he was all in. He sailed off the big jumps and cut off the line whenever he could get there. While Feuz got the win, what Thomsen got was worth a whole lot more. He found that his newly developed confidence was genuine.

As we said, the area is big and this exceptionally long race hill ends well up the mountain. That and the distance to Russia — one does not simply take a day trip across the border — made for a small band of hearty spectators. Thomsen ran 27th, at the tail end of the expected contenders. There were popular guys sitting on the podium spots, including Feuz and Bode Miller, who had been the fastest skier on top of the course, arcing through the super G turns. Miller had gotten slightly off form coming off a jump and flew farther than anyone else on the day. It had cost him the win but he had come within two-hundredths of the early leader, Adrien Theaux of France.

So, when Thomsen crossed the finish, five skiers after Miller, what there was for a crowd was all but silent. “ Nobody raised their hands, so I thought, ‘Oh, no, I must have had a bad run,’” Thomsen later said. “But then I saw my name come up. I’m still in shock.” Thomsen’s finish pushed Miller to fourth place, which definitely hurt his chances of becoming the first American man

to win a World Cup downhill title. With two races remaining Miller is 112 points behind tour-leading Didier Cuche. He’s 86 behind Klaus Kroell and 87 behind Feuz. He’ll need help from all three to meet his quest.

Combined, Feb. 12
The Sochi combined was the fourth and final one of the
season, and possibly of World Cup history. Feuz doubled
up, in a manner of speaking, by winning the downhill leg
of the super combined. As at Wengen, where he also won
the downhill portion of the combined, he was in good posi-
tion with no recognizable slalom talent in the vicinity of his
2:00.69 time. Having been second at Wengen and Kitz-
buehel and third at Chamonix, he was still a contender for
the World Cup combined title.
The favorite — the winner at Wengen and Kitzbuehel
— was Ivica Kostelic, and he was 1.52 seconds behind,
needing a better-than average-slalom run to ice the win,
the title and help pad his lead in the overall standings that
had been shrinking. He had overcome a larger margin at
Wengen.
Benjamin Raich is a slalom gold medalist in both world
championship and Olympic competition. He has won the
World Cup slalom trophy three times, but at 34, he hasn’t
been much of a slalom threat this season. As the third
starter in the Sochi combined slalom, he took the event
lead and held it through 12 skiers, until, in fact, it was
Kostelic’s turn.
You don’t spot Kostelic nearly two seconds in a slalom
and expect to come out on top. Kostelic, despite hurting
his knee off a jump in the downhill and hearing it click high
on the slalom course, posted the fastest slalom time, 0.66
better than second-fastest Raich. Italian Matteo Marsaglia,
Frenchman Thomas Mermillod Blondin and Feuz would
sneak into those seven-tenths of a second, but Kostelic
got the win, his sixth of the season and third in combined,
by a healthy 1.16 seconds.