It’s not just how well athletes perform, but when

Reporting from Vancouver, Canada — 

The day was still young, the sun still low, when Bode Miller pushed out of the starting gate for the men’s downhill.

Shadows masked the fast and rugged lower portion of the run.

“I was hitting bumps I couldn’t see,” he said. “I had a pretty strong feeling I wasn’t going to win.”

The official results show that Miller finished third in Monday’s race, a mere .09 of a second behind the winner, but he and other skiers talked about a bigger difference, a half-hour that passed before gold medalist Didier Defago started in better light.

It’s a question of timing, athletes at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics say, not just how you perform but also when.

These aren’t the blue-sky Summer Games played on synthetic tracks and hardwood courts. Each new skier carves a rut in the mountain and each triple lutz puts another dent in the ice.

Freak winter storms can play havoc with the consistency of the snow.

“It’s mountain weather,” U.S. biathlete Jay Hakkinen said. “It’s frustrating.”

And that makes the starting order a big part of the story in Vancouver.

At the Richmond Olympic Oval, officials have struggled to keep the ice consistent for long-track speedskaters. A delay marred the men’s 500-meter race and, during the 5,000-meter event, the surface turned frosty for the final pairings.

“The skaters have to push everywhere,” said Enrico Fabris of Italy, who finished seventh in the 5,000. “This is very slow ice for strong men.”

Luge is even trickier with its multiple runs, workers smoothing out grooves and holes only periodically. A complicated system reshuffles the start list for each round.

“From 16 to the back of the pack, the changes in conditions can be drastic,” USA Luge spokesman Sandy Caligiore said. “A lot of it depends on the weather but, as a general rule, early is good.”

Results are only part of the equation here -- the sliding venue came under intense scrutiny last week when Nodar Kumaritashvili, a 21-year-old from the Republic of Georgia, flew off a turn and died in training.

Officials might have frosted the surface to slow things down, but the weather in Whistler was too warm.

“It is correct that we did not expect those speeds on that track,” said Josef Fendt, president of the international luge federation.

If ice can be difficult to manage, then snow is downright capricious, no ice-resurfacing machine to smooth the mountain between runs.

In Alpine events such as the downhill and super combined, the top 15 skiers -- as determined by World Cup rankings -- draw for starting spots eight through 22.

This gives them a chance to watch and learn from the first racers, then get down the hill before the course becomes too rutted or the hard snow crumbles.

Again, the rules are general. A good starting spot can turn ugly if clouds part unexpectedly, letting in sun that melts the surface. A late slot can benefit from chilly breezes that harden the snow.

Earlier this week, Hakkinen watched the first biathletes in the 10-kilometer sprint start in cool, fast conditions. By the time he got on the course, dark clouds let loose with rain and wet flurries.

Skis stopped gliding. Small, distant targets became nearly invisible.

“When that does happen and rain turns to snow, the sharp crystals slow the track down so much,” said Jeremy Teela, another U.S. biathlete. “Everyone had waxed their skis for rain.”

The first 15 competitors finished in the top 15 spots -- save for a few exceptions -- and the rest of the 88-man field had almost no chance.

“I was confident that I would be on the podium because the weather conditions were hopeless,” said silver medalist Emil Hegle Svendsen of Norway.

“I am very lucky with the conditions I got during the race.”

That same day, at the nearby ski jump, winds swirled unpredictably, whipping up for one jumper, then disappearing for the next.

“It takes a little bit of luck,” said Johnny Spillane of the U.S., who won silver in the Nordic combined. “You need a really good jump, if you have bad conditions, to get through it.”

Not that Spillane gets too worked up about this sort of thing. He’s lived through too many winter days, seen too many dark clouds blow in and out.

The mood was much the same at the men’s downhill where Steve Nyman of the U.S. talked about starting sixth, running blind down that rough lower part.

Those bumps robbed him of precious speed, putting him 20th in the final standings.

Still, he shrugged, “that’s ski racing.”

david.wharton@latimes.com

twitter.com/LATimesWharton

Candus Thomson and Brian Hamilton contributed to this report.