Everyone Regroups

Sunday was another busy day with the K95 special jumping. To say there were some upsets would be an understatement. World cup leader Janda never meshed well with this hill and was out of it from the start. The Finn, Ahohnen, who at 28 has everything except an individual Olympic medal had tough conditions on the last round and fell to 6th. A surprise Russian, Vassiliev, who had jumped well in training but never finished in the top 10 in a world cup in his life, was leading after the 1st round but had similarly difficult conditions and fell to 10th. The surprise was Norwegian Lars Bystoel who won his first ever world cup this season and now holds a gold medal as well.

Two favorites in the Nordic combined who did very poorly in their opening event- Ronny Ackermann of Germany and Hannu Manninen of Finland- have taken some serious strides to regain form in the few days that they have between events. Ackermann travelled to France where he got 9 jumps to train on new boots and bindings and re-tuned skis (he would have only gotten 3 official training jumps in Torino). He felt his slow inrun speeds were hampering his efforts and a new finish on his bases haved helped this. His new boots also provide a better feeling and in training today he looked very strong. It has completely changed his personality, as well. The sour, silent Ronny is now a memory.

The Finn, Manninen felt that the high altitude of the athlete village in Sestriere was hurting his wind (he skied very poorly in the XC portion of the event) so he has moved out of the village and down the valley to a lower altitude. I will be surprised if this makes much a difference.

It was a recharge day for the NBC team. Some went to Torino while another group of us headed out for a day of alpine skiing. Much of the skiing is above treeline and the scenery is spectacular. We were right on the Italian border- part of the group of areas that are accessible are in France. One $22 ticket got us access to all of this. We spent a good part of the afternoon on the porch of the Gimonte Hut. A small slopeside restaurant run by the family that is only accessible by snowmobile or ski. They had a special Gimonte pizza (everything- including anchovies) that was fantastic. The family lives upstairs and were wonderful to us. They said that business is down for the Olympics as it has not been a great snow year and many tourists are scared away by Olympic traffic. Before we left they insisted that we join them for a shot of cintrongelo- a local "celebratory" drink.

It is interesting that I know less about the Olympics here in Pragelato than anyone in the US. When I speak to people back home they ask questions about Kwan's pull out, Kildow's fall, Bode's switching skis and I not only have no insights, but have no idea what they're talking about. Maybe if I spoke Italian it would be different... but it's giving me an appreciation for the US coverage (that I'd always thought was inferior to European).

Tomorrow, the Nordic combined team event- Former German NC skier, Hans Peter Pohl, who is doing German TV predicts a German victory followed by Austria and Finland. I'm thinking Norway will fit in there somewhere. All we know is that we don't know... and I guess that's reason enough to watch.