Mens Giant Slalom Race Day

Another early morning which started with a 5:30 am FaceTime with my granddaughter Bex. It was her birthday today.  After breakfast, I was in the elevator and this guy with a CBC jacket says 'aren't you that world famous Brian Lynam?'  It was Don Peppin who used to produce our LL World Cup events.

It was pitch dark on in the gondola so I brought my Petzl with me so I could brush up on my ICR rules on the ride up.  There was a disqualification in the ladies GS so I just wanted avoid a repeat.

In a GS, you must leave the Start within 10 seconds of the start tone (ie 5 secs before and up to 5 secs after). In the ladies GS, an athlete went out of the gate 4 seconds before the allowed start time window and she was disqualified.  The Start Referee was American and the athlete was from DPRK (North Korea).

The Olympic Alpine GS with 110 athletes and 69 nations is a cross between a World Cup and an ENL FIS race (first year FIS).  With 110 racers, the bib rack didn't have enough spaces for all of the bibs.

Controlling the start is always a challenge because of this wide range of experience of the athletes but I was supported by this awesome Start Crew including a couple of Sled Dogs.

 

 
 
 

 

We broke the inspection of the course into 3 groups each leaving 10 minutes apart...

..otherwise the crush of 110 athletes and their coaches would be chaos and the racers would be unable to see the line and or even the gates for all of people on the course.

 Following the racers inspection, the synchronized slip crew cleaned off the course...

 For the second run, the TV production was on fire through the top 30 racers who run in reverse order (of their result from the first run) for the second run. It was exciting to watch the preparation of the top racers as they prepare to leave the gate....lots of self talk, coach's encouragement and wiping down ski edges, handfuls of snow on the back of the neck.....and lots of spitting.

After that you could see a few cameras drop off as we got though the field....then the cameras come back on as the DPRK racers came into the Start tent.

I was very attentive for the 2 DPRK racers making sure they left the gate on time.  I watched as they started and skied a conservative line (ie they weren't going anywhere near the gates) and finished 53 seconds behind Marcel Hirscher's winning time of  2 minutes and 18 seconds. 

It was with some surprise that I found this photo of one them actually hitting a gate...

I finished up at the start and slid down to the course just in time to see the venue awards ceremony.

B.