On Tuesday we saw posters in Andorra la Vella for the FIS Alpine Ski World Cup, which was taking place near by. How often do you get to see the world’s best (at anything, really?) on a whim? Tickets were 10 euros, and the venue was not too far away from our apartment. These would be the perks of visiting a nation about the quarter of a size of most of the American counties I know.
So this morning we loaded our luggage in the car, had one last breakfast in Arinsal, picked up a little magnet for our refrigerator and then drove up to the skiing. We got some of the last parking available and walked in to a spectators area that wasn’t as big as most high school sports venues I’m used to. The crowd was boisterous. The sky was clear, the sun was bright and the temperatures were warm.
And, you could tell from a distance, the top of the mountain, stretches mid-way through the run, looked sheer and vertical. You’ve no idea until you see it in person. Even this shot at the finish line looks compressed and flat. It isn’t, as you’ll see.
The skiing was fantastic.
Swiss skier Lara Gut-Behrami won her fourth super-G title.
She also has an Olympic gold in this discipline.
This is what I know about skiing: they are trying to go fast. There are three timed segments on this course. And if you’re time is in the green at any of those segments, you’re in the lead. The only problem on the day was that there weren’t a lot of lead changes. Quite a few people, in the men’s and women’s races, came out with great times in that first timed stretch. The crowd would cheer, but they were wise to the course. None of that mattered if you weren’t in the green at the second timer, and if you didn’t have a crazy blend of chaos and sanity on that third leg, your time probably wouldn’t put you at the top of the board at the finish.
Only a few people could do that today, but when they did, the tension in the crowd was something physical and visceral. The tension went up, the cheering and the banging got louder. Maybe the skiers could feel it too. Maybe Marco Odermatt did.
The Swiss skier won the men’s super-G at the World Cup Finals with a huge performance. He’s on pace, apparently, to break the single season points record. I don’t have any idea how that’s tabulated, but the man in the aero suit is set to destroy a 23-year-old mark, and that’s not nothing. He could do it this weekend.
Also, we saw the greatest skier of all time.
American Mikaela Shiffrin was tied with Swedish legend Ingemar Stenmark with 86 career victories when she came down this mountain. She’d recently tied the record not too long after Stenmark, himself, said “She’s much better than I was. You cannot compare. I could never have been so good in all disciplines.”
In her career, Shiffrin, is a five-time Overall World Cup champion and a four-time world champion in slalom, an event where she also holds seven World Cup wins. She is also, of course, a two-time Olympic gold medalist.
Her wins record will continue to grow. Shiffrin is only 28, and she ended the year with 14 wins, her second best year yet, including championships in the slalom, the grand slalom and the overall.
On this day, the greatest to ever hurl herself down the face of a mountain finished 14th.
After the World Cup skiing, we got in the car and pointed it south, toward Barcelona. First we pointed it north, toward France, but that’s for another post.
