Awaiting a Hero in the Downhill

The opening ceremony is over and it’s downhill from here, starting today with Alpine’s signature event atop Kandahar-Banchetta Giovanni Nasi.

Super-Gs are super, the combined is a kick and slaloms are slick, but “Olympic downhill champion” is a designation you take to your grave.

“It’s the blue-ribbon event,” Patrick Lang, a longtime World Cup press officer and respected ski-racing journalist, said. “The Olympic downhill champion is a hero.”

You know Tommy Moe because he won one major downhill race in his career -- at the 1994 Lillehammer Olympics.

Austrian Franz Klammer became immortalized with his razor’s edge run in 1976.

Did you remember that in 1994, Markus Wasmeier of Germany won the Olympic gold in giant slalom?

Didn’t think so.

So whose life gets changed today?

American Daron Rahlves, who has zeroed in on his last Olympic chance with laser-like intensity, thinks it will be his.

Rahlves set the tone when he won Thursday’s first training run by more than a second. He took Friday off and finished tied for 10th on Saturday in his final tune-up.

“I think I have a chance of skiing fast on this hill,” Rahlves said. “I know there are a lot of guys who could too.”

The United States filled out its four-man downhill team when Scott Macartney did better than Marco Sullivan in the final training run.

Rahlves and Bode Miller had already earned berths, and Steve Nyman won a spot Friday by finishing ahead of Macartney and Sullivan in a race-off.

Other than banking on an Austrian to win -- a record six have won the event -- you never quite know how these things are going to go.

Sometimes a skier needs to be almost crazy, like Klammer, to win. Other times, playing it safe gets you home.

In 1998, Jean-Luc Cretier of France, anticipating trouble at Gate 7, strategically “dumped” speed on his approach -- counter to every speed-racer’s instincts -- and it paid off in gold.

If history repeats, this won’t be Fritz Strobl’s day. The Austrian won four years ago at Salt Lake City but no Olympic downhill champion has ever repeated.

“I’m not the favorite at the moment,” Strobl said, possibly selling himself short. “I have a small chance.”

So who will it be?

Austria boasts eight of the top 20 downhill skiers in the world but, fortunately for everyone else, only the top four get bibs here.

Klaus Kroell won the last Austrian spot by winning Friday’s training run. Maybe winning today’s race will be easy compared to that.

Miller, the tempestuous American and World Cup overall champion, teased everyone in training this week, mixing lightning fast intervals with slow ones, so as to not give away all his secrets.

The vibe around Sestriere on Saturday was: Watch out for Bode!

“It’s going to test the downhillers,” Miller said of the course. “It’s not a super-technical course, so it’s not as easy for us [all-around racers] to make up time, but it is worthy, I think. There’s high speed, it’s good terrain and there’s some technical turns in there for sure.”

Racers will drop 2,998 feet from top to bottom. They will get airborne early at Salto Dell ‘Angelo (Angel jump), make their way through Salo Motta, traverse the technically demanding section in a wooded area known as Curva Acque Minerali (Mineral Waters), then on to New Tobago before launching off Salto Borgata on the final descent to the finish line.

So who will it be?

Can Austria’s Hermann Maier, the greatest skier of his generation, and maybe any, cap a miraculous return from a near-fatal motorcycle crash to win his first Olympic downhill?

What about the gracefully aging Kjetil Andre Aamodt, 34, of Norway, who has won a record seven Olympic Alpine medals?

Or, possibly, the almost prehistoric Kristian Ghedina -- born in 1969! -- making Italy proud?

So who will it be?

When asked that question after Thursday’s training run, Sullivan turned his head back toward the mountain.

“Look at the leader board,” he said.

It was as good a gauge as any: 1: Daron Rahlves, U.S.; 2: Michael Walchhofer, Austria; 3: Hermann Maier, Austria.

Rahlves made a statement by dominating the first training run before taking Friday off to let everyone else think about it. Rahlves, at 32, is as “dialed-in” as anyone has seen him. He won the last World Cup race on this mountain, in 2004, and he appears possessed to win again.

He’ll get ready by cranking up Metallica in his RV this morning.

“It gets me fired up,” he said.

Walchhofer is the World Cup downhill standings leader and carries more weight than Rahlves through the flats. Rahlves, though, has the advantage through the technical sections.

“I think there are three or four racers, if they have perfect runs, then they are the winner,” Walchhofer said.

“Rahlves, Fritz Strobl and hopefully me.”

Maier famously crashed in the 1998 downhill at Nagano -- who could forget that? -- and missed out at Salt Lake City in 2002 after suffering injuries in his motorcycle accident.

He already has won two Olympic gold medals -- but this is his last shot at downhill.

“It means a lot for me to be here,” Maier said.

So who will it be?

The wait is almost over.