It Could Have Been Prevented

Nagged by another injury in a seemingly endless succession, Regine Cavagnoud wasn’t expected to compete in the opening weekend of the World Cup ski season at Soelden, Austria.

But Cavagnoud, the defending World Cup super-giant slalom champion, was impatient to begin pursuing her goal of becoming the overall World Cup champion. She didn’t dare to speak of the Salt Lake City Games, not after three previous Olympic disappointments.

“I want to make it there with as many results, podiums and victories as possible under my belt,” she told the Reuters news agency. “This way, I would have no doubts and I would feel the same way as I did before the world championships.”

The Frenchwoman seemed to have gotten a jump on her dream when she finished third in that giant slalom at Soelden on Oct. 27. With her schedule clear until World Cup giant slalom and slalom races Nov. 22 and 24 at Aspen, Cavagnoud stayed in Austria to train with her teammates on the Pitz Valley Glacier. The German women’s team was also training there, which wasn’t unusual; the U.S. and Austrians train together quite often.

But on Oct. 29 things went terribly wrong, sending shock waves through the tight-knit world of elite skiing and setting off a barrage of finger-pointing over an accident that might have been prevented.

Hurtling down the glacier during a practice run at an estimated 60 mph, Cavagnoud, 31, cleared a bump and collided head-on with Markus Anwander, a German coach who had skied onto the course to prepare it for his competitors. Cavagnoud suffered extensive brain and facial injuries and clung to life for two days at a clinic in Innsbruck, Austria, before doctors determined her brain had ceased to function.

With her father Francois, mother Simone, younger sister Valerie and fiance Bernard Champet by her side, she died when her respirator was turned off.

Anwander also suffered serious injuries, including neck and spinal damage that required emergency surgery. He began emerging from a coma late last week and is expected to survive.

Cavagnoud was buried Nov. 5 in her hometown of La Clusaz, in the Alps, where the village carpenter’s daughter first stood on skis at age 3. Photos on her Web site show a child sitting cross-legged behind an array of trophies, an adolescent outside her parents’ chalet surrounded by more awards, a shy young woman smiling toward a camera that couldn’t capture the fierce determination she demonstrated in repeatedly overcoming serious knee and back injuries.

The photos show a career, a life, cut horribly short.

And it didn’t have to happen.

The district attorney’s office in Innsbruck is investigating the accident, but it’s not clear when Anwander will be able to testify--or how much he will remember. Preliminary indications were the French and German teams had not coordinated the frequencies of their walkie-talkies, which would have allowed officials at the start to warn Anwander that Cavagnoud was approaching. It has also been theorized that Anwander’s radio malfunctioned, or that he believed the French skiers had finished and so thought it safe to be on the course.

“We had just been there, and had been training on that hill,” American skier Picabo Street, the 1998 Olympic super-G champion, said last week. “And there were so many people there, and so many people training together, and such a necessity for communication.

“I don’t know. Maybe we lucked out because we were Austrians, Canadians and Americans and we’re used to spending time training together. ... That’s what makes it tough. When it’s something so simple as a communication that causes a tragedy like that, it really makes us come together as a team and say, ‘Let’s talk about it.”’

From Risk, Tragedies

Risk taking is part of skiing, and competitors crave for the adrenaline rush it brings. But with risk sometimes comes tragedy, and skiing has seen its share of fatalities and serious injuries.

Austria’s Ulrike Maier died in 1994 when she lost control during a World Cup downhill race in Garmish-Partenkirchen, Germany, breaking her neck when she struck her head against a timing post. Austria’s Peter Wirnsberger II died of injuries he suffered during a 1992 fall while free skiing; that followed by one year the death of Austria’s Gernot Reinstadler, who crashed during training for a World Cup downhill race in Wengen, Switzerland. More recently, 1984 Olympic downhill gold medalist Bill Johnson of the U.S. suffered brain damage during a race in Kalispell, Mont., in March; 24 hours later, Canada’s Dave Irwin suffered extensive head injuries during a training run for an extreme skiing competition in Banff, Canada.

Reconsidering Safety

Cavagnoud’s death has raised questions about whether too many risks are taken during training runs, and whether safety measures must be reinforced to protect skiers’ lives.

Daron Rahlves of Sugar Bowl, last season’s super-G world champion, said he has often come around a gate or a blind spot during a practice run and spied an intruder on the course. He recalled teammate Jake Fiala narrowly missing a photographer during a test run last summer in Chile, with Fiala flying past at about 65 mph.

“If I have time, I’ll just try to spray the guy as hard as I can, just work him with all this snow, just as a wakeup,” Rahlves said. “Other times you’re lucky and sneak by.”

Cavagnoud was not lucky.

“It shouldn’t happen,” Rahlves said. “It’s something that should be taken care of. It’s like you’re driving a car, coming around a bend, and someone’s standing right there. They shouldn’t be standing in the road....

“It’s hard to imagine something like that can happen. I’m going to be more on top of it. It’ll make me more aware to make sure it’s clear on every run.”

Coaches are responsible for determining when it’s safe for a skier to leave the starting gate. “The start is the control tower,” U.S. women’s head coach Marjan Cernigoj said. Cavagnoud’s death, he said, “makes us realize how focused we have to be every time we are on skis. But it’s impossible to provide total safety, top to bottom.”

Cernigoj said setting practice policies can be complicated when coaches and skiers from other countries are involved.

“They may be used to a different system than you are,” he said. “How you clear the course, how you move down the course, when you do your slips [slipping to pack the snow], where are the people stationed. ... You have doctors, service men around, so many people roaming around the area.”

Street praised Jim Tracy, the women’s downhill and super-G coach, for his vigilance in maintaining communication with people on and near the course when U.S. skiers are training. She believes such caution will prevent a U.S. skier from dying in the kind of accident that killed Cavagnoud.

“In my entire career, we’ve been extremely strict about hill etiquette,” she said. “We’ve kicked people off this hill [at Beaver Creek, Colo.] so many times for lack of etiquette. We’ve booted the French men off, the Austrian men off, we’ve booted several speed teams off this mountain for displaying a lack of concern for the environment and the people in it.

“And so as a team, that’s why we haven’t had any scenarios. That’s why we haven’t had people running into people.”

Why Cavagnoud and Anwander collided might never be known.

A spokeswoman for the International Ski Federation said the investigation of Cavagnoud’s death must be left to local authorities, because the accident didn’t occur during an official training run.

“We can do no more than express our condolences for the whole family and all those around Regine Cavagnoud,” spokeswoman Sonja Reichen said.

Austrian authorities initially focused on Anwander but later expanded their investigation to the teams’ communication problems. The French team rejected suggestions Cavagnoud hadn’t been authorized to leave the start and said a signal was sent to alert the Germans that Cavagnoud was approaching.

“We tried to wave to [Anwander] to let him know that she was coming,” said Jean-Philippe Vuillet, the French Alpine team’s head coach. “She did not go off track, and when the crash happened she just could not see him.”

Germany’s chief coach for Alpine skiing, Walter Vogel, said the accident occurred during what was supposed to be a break, and contended no one on the German team knew Cavagnoud was on her way down.

“I can’t recognize any mistakes by our team,” he said.

Recognize them or not, there were mistakes. Fatal mistakes.

Michaela Dorfmeister of Austria, who won the race that turned out to be Cavagnoud’s last, was devastated by her rival’s death. “Now and again, you do think during training that something can happen because so many people are on the course,” she said. “But that it can be so horrific....”