Calgary World Cup Ski Racing : Women’s Downhill On Despite Safety Worries

Early Saturday morning, shortly after midnight, a light snow began to fall on the Nakiska ski area at Mt. Allan. By doing so, it might have bailed out the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics and saved the face of this scraggly brown mountain 54 miles west of the city.

But not before the Olympic site had once again come under scathing criticism, with at least one coach--and a Canadian at that--charging that poor skiing conditions on the mountain and the unwillingness of organizers to cancel a planned World Cup event here were endangering the competitors’ safety.

It began last week when the most severe heat wave in 60 years, combined with 70 mile-per-hour winds, removed what little snow had settled on the site of the Olympic downhill and slalom courses.

This, the latest in a series of problems to befall Mt. Allan, occurred just as the women’s World Cup circus pulled into town. With practice runs set to start last Wednesday, the warm Chinook winds blew westward across the prairie, and in a matter of hours temperatures soared by 40 degrees.

For three days, practice runs were canceled, causing officials of the Husky World Downhill to fret, and the world’s assembled skiers to fidget after six missed practice runs.

As conditions on the mountain deteriorated, the Canadian press, which has designated this as the Olympic venue it loves to hate, gloated.

Headline writers let loose: Mt. Mushmore; Meltdown at Mt. Allan; Surf’s Up at Nakiska.

The mountain seemed covered in nothing more than mud and slush.

“The snow is like water,” said Michela Figini of Switzerland, who is second overall in the downhill standings this season. “Today looked so bad on top. I’ve never seen this (in North America) or in Switzerland, too. It’s incredible, I can’t believe it. The snow is so soft it’s like water--you can’t ski on this.”

It is a difficult to cancel a World Cup event even at the best of times, and the races here are to be the first major test of the mountain.

After Saturday morning’s light snow and cooler temperatures--and several hours of nonstop snow-making from Nakiska’s $5-million (Canadian) worth of snow-making equipment--the International Ski Federation (FIS) jury walked the mountain and pronounced it fit for two downhill training runs.

At last. The natives--and foreigners--were restless. “I came to North America to have a race, not to stay here and do nothing,” Maria Walliser of Switzerland said.

The first run was set for 11:15 a.m., before the bright sun could further harm on the course.

Most skiers pronounced the run “fine,” but the assessments were reserved. This was in part because the first run is a throwaway run, a run in which the skier finds the line of the hill, decides on the proper ski and generally skis conservatively to get a feel for the run.

That is especially crucial at Mt. Allan,where the course goes from technical nightmare on the top to slow-poke flat on the bottom.

Canadian team member Liisa Sarvijarvi admitted that the top was “pretty scary.”

“It’s the steepest I’ve ever raced,” she said. “It’s very fast up there. There’s a lot of pressure on the turns.”

By the second run, an hour later, conditions had worsened. The day was sunny and cool, not cold enough to hold the snow firm on the mountain.

More than 60% of the skiers missed gates, unusual in a downhill. Racers were reporting that ruts at the top of the hill were forcing them off the course, and slush at the bottom made it difficult to find an edge on turns.

“It was too soft, and it’s dangerous when it’s soft,” Marina Kiehl of West Germany said.

Midway thorough the second run, it was announced that there would be no more runs for the day, giving the skiers only the two practice runs before today’s final. Most racers thought it wasn’t enough.

World Cup racers want four or five or even six runs before a final. And that is on a well-groomed course.

“The conditions were good for the first run, but now it is too difficult,” Walliser said. “It’s not good skiing now, the snow is too soft. I want more runs, but they want it (the race), so it has to be.”

The conditions for the second run were marginal. “It looked a little hairy at the top and the bottom is pure mush,” Canada’s Adele Allender said.

By the time all the skiers had finished their second run, most left the slushy area in front of the lodge shaking their heads.

If the skiers were reluctant to criticize the Olympic mountain, Currie Chapman, coach of the Canadian national team, was not.

“It was a situation where we had to have a second run in order to have a race,” Chapman said. “We definitely pushed things in terms of safety. We were very fortunate that we didn’t have any accidents.

“I really think we played around with the safety of the athletes. I have a very bad feeling right now. We pushed it to the limit.”

Chapman said that he did not know if he would have taken his skiers off the mountain if it had been the final. He said that because of the conditions, he told some of his athletes to ski a conservative run.

“In my mind, it was extreme,” he said. “It ran the extreme in terms of safety and in terms of snow conditions. At the top it was glazed skating with some junk on the side, down to a mush bowl. But here we are, we got through it, thank God. They all survived it.”

The FIS technical delegate, Heinz Krecek, bristled at suggestions that the conditions for second run were unsafe.

“He (Chapman) said that because his girls were not so fast,” Krecek said.

Krecek’s responsibility as the technical delegate is to insure the safety of the skiers. But he is also the man in charge of the women’s World Cup schedule.

That may have led to the FIS jury’s unprecedented decision late Saturday to run both the downhill and the super-G today. The super-G had previously been canceled. Never in the 21-year history of this women’s circuit have any two events been contested on the same day.

Krecek gave some insight into the motivation for the decision when he said: “I know this is really hard for the girls. What comes first is the downhill. I look at the calender and I don’t want to go to Vail (Colo.) without running the downhill.”

The women go to Vail next, where two downhill races will be run because of a cancellation earlier in the season.